Man, I’m aware of this but honestly rarely think about it. Add this to the reasons I wish I could manually flag and just stay as a combatant.
Imo the best solution to this would be giving Cleric's a res that alleviates most of the death penalty. This way you'll promote party play even more and dying won't seem like that big of a hit on your progress. This would also give Clerics a way to make money. Dead people might shout in search of a cleric and offer them money/resources for a res. The same thing happened in the early days of L2.
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HumblePuffinMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Imo the best solution to this would be giving Cleric's a res that alleviates most of the death penalty. This way you'll promote party play even more and dying won't seem like that big of a hit on your progress. This would also give Clerics a way to make money. Dead people might shout in search of a cleric and offer them money/resources for a res. The same thing happened in the early days of L2.
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.
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.
They give each death weight. You shouldn't be able to play the game half-afk, like quite a lot of other mmos these days. And it promotes party play, which is one of the main points of Ashes - bring the community feel back to mmos.
Well, it’s a portion of materials.
Devs have not said it’s a huge portion.
Non-Combatant death penalties are the same for PvP as they are for PvE.
So, you don’t lose more from being killed by a player than you would for being killed by a mob.
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.
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.
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.
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HumblePuffinMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
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.
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.
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.
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.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
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.
Right. But, you are way more likely to die over and over again from mob deaths than from being PK deaths, so…
At that point, you’re saying Ashes death penalties are too harsh for you to play at all because mobs might kill you.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Many people from a wide range of differing playstyles are here for a variety of reasons.
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.
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.
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.
Right. But, you are way more likely to die over and over again from mob deaths than from being PK deaths, so…
At that point, you’re saying Ashes death penalties are too harsh for you to play at all because mobs might kill you.
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.
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.
Again...
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.
So, did you misrepresent it on purpose then? Or just a blonde moment?
I didn't misrepresent it though. I was talking about the severity of the stat dampening penalty after you've gotten 10 kills on you. And the fact that they haven't tested anything properly yet, so we got 0 clue about the scaling of that penalty.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
We don't have 0 clue abot the design.
And all we can discuss meaningfully right now is the design and intention.
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HumblePuffinMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
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.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
edited April 2022
I don't think I said anything about the only way a PvX game can be.
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.
I have no issues with dropping materials on death or having an xp-debt. What I don't like is having reduced combat or stat efficiency. That just becomes more of an annoyance, imo. I remember Steven saying that Corruption will gradually reduce your combat efficiency with more and more stacks, as a way to reduce their ability to continuously grief players, which I thought was a good idea. I agree normal death should carry a weight to it, though.
Reading some earlier comments, I really don't understand how y'all can think PvPing over rare resources is worse than the awful standard we have of having to compete with a bot you can't kill lest you be karma bombed or have to deal with a troll who has slightly better movement speed than you, and just pulls mobs on you all the time and teleports to a resource node right before you can get there.
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 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.
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.
And that's how it already works. Except it's an overall count rather than "for each character" one. So your first few PKs won't give you much corruption, but your 20th will cripple you quite a lot and you'll probably have to grind for hours or die multiple times.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Reading some earlier comments, I really don't understand how y'all can think PvPing over rare resources is worse than the awful standard we have of having to compete with a bot you can't kill lest you be karma bombed or have to deal with a troll who has slightly better movement speed than you, and just pulls mobs on you all the time and teleports to a resource node right before you can get there.
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 don't care about competing with bots. I don't give competing with bots a thought. And, AFAIK, it doesn't affect my gameplay.
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.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
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.
Friendly competition is Combatant v Combatant.
Killing Non-Combatants is not friendly competition.
Dygz, will you play Ashes if by any chance Steven decides to have the corruption values be not as high as you think they'll be and PKing will be more prevalent than just a few kills on the whole server here and there?
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).
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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).