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
My best solution is let us have macros so I can macro my weakest spell with a /say “just a tap”. Just keep that combatant timer rolling.
Jokes aside alpha 1 was what 40% or 50%? It didn’t feel that horrible as long as you weren’t suiciding every time you saw a mob. Made me really contemplate how much I was pulling. Had quite a few “oh crap that’s too much” moments.
I didn’t really consider the fights breaking out because a non-combatant died to a mob and that other non-combatant theyve been farming near stole their resources before they got back. Oh the salt.
I think that Cleric ability would be interesting. Sounds rather strong within the current parameters of the game. I could see it be ‘some’; ‘most’ might break the system.
Interesting 🤔 I was under the impression those were only corruption penalties. A bad design choice if regular player deaths result in such harsh penalties, IMO.
True but to me anything over 20% is a huge chunk lol. if i grind for 10 hours and i lose 30% that's 3 hours of my time gone lol. Also i was just bringing up the death penalties because he sad "there are millions of people who don't mind dying over, and over, and over - as long as it's a good game" so i was pointing out i would hate to die over and over with these harsh penalties from any type of death.
You won’t be dying “over and over” due to your non-combatant status, @Lithion. That just won’t happen based on what Steven has already told us about corruption.
You will need to assume some risk, however, every time you venture out to collect mats.
Ashes isn’t going to all of a sudden do an about-face and make open world PvP optional.
To discuss further on a brief point I made once in this thread; I totally agree with that sentiment. I would much rather lose that lesser amount of resources. I’m okay with the range they had it at in alpha 1, but would prefer not to.
That’s why I wouldn’t be against them making combatant the base line flag instead of non combatant. Combatant becomes the “normal” death penalties, non-combatant is 50% more, corrupt is still 4x combatant and everything else.
Then you can optionally choose to flag as a non-combatant. You could potentially lose 50% more resources, but everyone knows “this person doesn’t want to fight, I’m probably gonna get corruption”.
Kinda takes the mystery out of the random pvp content, but it wouldn’t feel quite as bad dying to a mob, and sets some very clear boundaries to other players if you’re not feeling it.
Either way as I said I didn’t think the non-combatant amount felt bad in Alpha 1 so there’s probably no reason to fix what isn’t broken yet.
We don't know how harsh the penalties will be, they're all subject to testing. All we know is the general framework of the system. The parameters, the actual numbers could vary widely.
But ya know man (this is not directed at you really, wall of text incoming, damn leg is shaking I feel it coursing through the veins), there's three markets in the mmo genre (there's more, but for simplicity). The market for sterilized, sanitized, woke as one guy put it in this thread lol, on rails, youtube guided out of their minds mmos. The market for full loot/full pvp, almost anything goes mmos, pretty much destined to always be niche. And there's a somewhat unexplored mmo market that falls between those two extremes. Ashes will fall somewhere on that in between spectrum.
For the people that are here for the type of game Ashes is going to be, many of us are here because we're tired of having our hand held. We're tired of game devs saying "ok lets cater to the lowest common denominator (so we can make the most money possible), lets make sure we have protections built in for the most clueless, braindead, helpless, oblivious, gamers, with 8 kids and 3 wives and 6 jobs, 4 dogs that all need to be taken outside every 30 minutes.
Not because I have anything against people that have a very busy life. But because by the time the game is done being catered to them it's usually not even really a game anymore. It's a god damn button pressing simulator. And there's already games GALORE for these types of players. There's multiple sets of guides on youtube for these games that literally take you from the moment you first log in, through every quest, every dungeon, every boss, every type of crafting, how to collect this mount, how to collect this herb, how to collect this flim flam, how to flim flam the kumquat with it. All on rails. You don't even have to play the game, just watch the stupid guide, same thing basically. It's all so simple, you shouldn't even need the guide in the first place.
Where's the WoW-like guide for Ashes that shows you on video the optimal route to harvest every iron ore node? There won't be one, because resource node spawn locations aren't fixed. Where's the guide that tells you how to deal with the guild or node group who's camping that iron because they have a siege tomorrow and they need all the iron they can get? Where's the guide that explains to you how to beat the Troll Cave boss when a team of dipshits has decided that's their boss tonight? There won't be one.
I'm sure there's guides for "best tips and tricks for <insert WoW battleground>". But where's the guide for what to do when you go to pick a flower and it pisses someone off because he was about to pick it so he flags up and attacks you and some random guy saw him flag up so he flagged up and attacked him, but you flagged too and someone from some guild flagged and attacked you but some other random guy HATES that guild so he flagged up and attacked that guy and next thing you know it's WW3 and by the end of this conflagration you've pissed off some guild who wasn't even in the initial altercation that you really didn't want to piss off. And you're worried about the consequences of pissing this guilid off.
Is there some kind of guide to fix this for me? LIke bro my dog needs to go outside.
This and so much more is what we crave. For things to matter, for gameplay to be consequential. For there to be actual decision making that needs to occur instead of just pressing buttons. For a non sterilized and sanitized environment, a more natural environment.
Penalties on death are part of this.
At that point, you’re saying Ashes death penalties are too harsh for you to play at all because mobs might kill you.
Casuals as well as hardcores.
PvPers as well as PvEers and RPers.
Adventurers as well as Crafters.
Ashes isn’t PvP focused and it isn’t PvE focused.
Ashes isn’t Hardcore focused and it isn’t Casual focused.
Ashes doesn’t cater to any of those.
Ashes is focused on massive “group” battles: Sieges and Caravan raids. But there will be plenty for players to do “solo”.
If you get pissed off because someone picked your flower, that’s a problem no one can guide you through.
Exactly
I know I wont be dying over and over, and I'm not saying the death penalties are too harsh lol. I was just replying to someone who said he doesn't think casual gamers would actually mind dying over and over again. I was saying I think they would mind if for some reason they did die over and over again because there are death penalties in this game. He didn't think death penalties applied unless corrupted.
So, did you misrepresent it on purpose then? Or just a blonde moment?
Do you have a quote from Steven that specifically states a separate PK count from corruption?
I find lots of things that refer to each time you kill a non combatant your corruption increases in an additive way, and you will need to work off that corruption. I’m not finding anything that separates the two making player kills a multiplicative process where you need to work off both corruption and player kills.
Just trying to figure out if I’m missing a specific comment separating the two, or if we are just inferring different things from the same comments.
Do I have such a quote? No.
Do such quotes exist? Yes.
Found it on my fourth search through. Not sure how I kept missing it.
These things can be quite hard to find sometimes, even if you know exactly what you are looking for.
I think?
This what you do for a PvP-focused game.
Where PvP is the default and you punish players who opt out of PvP by giving them higher than normal death penalties.
A game that is PvP-centric, where Non-Combatants are punished for not participating in PvP, is a game I would not play.
And all we can discuss meaningfully right now is the design and intention.
Yurp that’s the first reference to it, and then there’s a follow up reference where he briefly elaborated on it in response to someone asking about it in discord. I was unable to pull up the discord comment, but there’s a blurry screen grab in the references section.
And Dygz I understand that you think your narrow definition of PvX in regards to player flagging is the only way it can be, but PvX is literally just a catch all for player vs everything. It CAN be a system, like Ashes, that rewards you for flagging, but if that’s not how it goes exactly, and the game has interconnected PvE and PvP and other stuff content it is still a PvX game. It may lean one way or another but just because it doesn’t fit your exact definition doesn’t mean it’s not PvX. If your rebuttal is just basically “but it isn’t”, then go argue with the definition on the wiki page and the rest of the internet because I’m tired of arguing semantics with you.
Also you cut it out in your quote, but I said “I would rather” at the start, and finished with, “but it’s probably not broke so no need to fix”. Current pass of penalties for all parties seem generally fine to me.
All I said is that if you're making a PvP-centric game, you have PvP as the default and you punish the people who choose not to participate in PvP.
If you want PvE-focused players to play the game you can't punish them for not participating in PvP. They will instead choose not to play that game.
If you want PvE-focused players who don't enjoy PvP to play your game, you don't punish them for not participating in PvP, instead you entice them to PvP by rewarding them for participating in PvP.
The "I would rather" part is inconsequential to what I'm trying to get across to you.
The part I'm responding to is "I wouldn't be against them making combatant the baseline".
And I'm just explaining why they won't do so.
You like PvP, so of course you would like Ashes to be a PvP-centric game with PvP as the baseline.
Combatant as the baseline works great for a PvP-centric game.
It does not work for a game that is trying to convince PvE focused players, who would prefer to be on a separate PvE server, to play the game. PvE focused players, who would prefer to be on a separate PvE server are not going to play a game where Combatant is they default and Non-Combatants have harsher death penalties than normal.
And, no, when Steven says Ashes is PvX, he does not mean it as a catch-all for everything.
Steven defines PvX as not PvP-focused and not PvE-focused.
If the game punishes Non-Combatants for opting out of PvP and Combatant is default. That is a PvP-focused game.
You are trying to be pedantic about labels - the labels are only meaningful as a quick way for Steven to explain his game design philosophy. What's important is the actual philosophy behind the design - to entice PvE-focused players to play the game on the same servers as PvP focused players - not whatever you think the denotation of PvX means to you.
Games like that make me want to tear my hair out.
Is it "your node"? No. Do we want fulfilling competition resources instead of just the standard MMO experience with resource nodes? I would hope so.
I do think the corruption system will protect bots, people's fantasy is that they'll be able to stop them all, but I highly doubt it. And I think it may turn out to be a problem on launch, $15 for a month is not a hard barrier to entry for botters, and there is no way for the community to self-police bots since their corruption and PK count will skyrocket if they kill bots.
I think corruption should grow exponentially. So you can kill one or two players without too much penalty, that's just "friendly competition". But if you kill someone 3, 4, 5 times, you'll gain corruption exponentially for each subsequent kill. That way, if you see a bot farming, you can easily kill him and throw him off this route.
The bounty hunter system can feed into that system as well. Maybe the radius you can be tracked is based on the amount of corruption (# of PKs), so killing 1 bot or a little scuffle over a farming node doesn't put you on the worlds most wanted list right away.
Other players forcing me to PvP when I'm not in the mood for PvP does affect my gameplay.
Bots are not forcing me to do something I don't want to do - as far as I know.
Killing Non-Combatants is not friendly competition.
Cause from all of your comments (which are mainly the same ones, but still) you seem like a person that would really not like a game where you can be killed at any time, yet Ashes definitely seems to be that kind of game (even if the penalties stay harsh).