Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
I guess I don't understand how this makes it better?
I see the prospect of accidentally turning red as a negative vastly outweigh any positive from your change.
Well I'm not sure I'm following 100% clearly as there has been a lot of back and forth and I'm admittedly not reading all of it, but how would it be 'easy to do accidentally'? AoE doesn't effect greens from what people have stated here on forums numerous times without push back. So you'd have to hit them with a target attack twice as far as I understand Alacrite's system. What scenario are you thinking of would you be hitting the green twice 'on accident'?
It would depend on the goal of the game.
I would not build a game with the system Ashes has, but that is because I would not build a game with the goals Ashes has.
To encourage more players who are not innately combat-minded to learn and participate in combat as something other than 'a desperate reaction to defend themselves', you would want a system in which the initial hit is a 'challenge', and the attacker is incentivized to stop the attack there.
Not only that, the ability to quickly tell the difference between a full 'murderer' and a person who 'stops attacking because they want to have a fight', without nerfing the 'initial engage of rogues or whoever', is useful if your goal is to increase the willingness of more players to PvP.
Increasing PvP encounters opens it up so that more players will feel comfortable 'challenging someone nearby because they are bored or similar'.
It would also, however, have all the effects other posters have mentioned, making it so that you 'couldn't' just PvP people who don't fight back and hope to somehow avoid corruption. You'd hit them, then if you continue, you're red. The counterquestion would be 'if you didn't want to kill them, why did you keep hitting them?'
Ashes doesn't have a goal of 'making PvP-avoidant players more interested in PvP' from the perspective of PvP being 'fun', it's 'PvP as a catalyst for change, drama, and social strata/pushing people to group up'. Random 'chivalrous' 1v1s in the open world don't benefit this anyway, so 'improving' the system in this way wouldn't do that.
It's a good idea, it's halfway to what I consider 'the correct answer', but it misses the mark because it's not the goal of the game.
If you are trying to update dots on multiple mobs and tab to a player you didn't see?
I agree, I've heard that AOE spells won't count, but some weapon Arc swings probably will. So if I do a big spinning slash attack the weapon would probably still hit someone.
The main thing is though that every time the attacker hits the gatherer, the attacker turns himself purple for another 90 seconds. He's a free kill not only to you and friends you may call to help, but to anyone that passes by. He's completely open to attack. He's taking a risk. If he's killed by passersby, he loses a portion of his own loot. Even if he has no loot to lose, he would still suffer combatant death penalties. (This is why death penalties are so important, so that people have skin in the game at all times, other than the structured pvp events where they don't apply.)
This is where what makes it very fringe comes in. How long is this guy going to sit here and do this? He could be off progressing his character, making money. Instead he's sitting here keeping himself perma purple, with all the risk that entails, so that he can stop a gatherer he's never met before, nor has any issue with, from gathering? Not even interested in gathering the stuff himself. Just wants to stop some random guy from gathering it. Again if it can happen, it will. But realistically, this will be pretty fringe. And certainly is not worth sterilizing the whole pvp system for.
Now if 15 minutes prior, he knows you looted his body after he died to pve, well you asked for it to some extent. If you're a member of a rival guild or a node that sieged and destroyed his node last week, to some extent you asked for it. Etc etc. And you're going to have to come up with pvp solutions to the pvp problem you have. Or just go somewhere else.
In both situations (your suggestion and mine), the attacker is taking a risk by attacking the player. Even if the attacker doesn't want corruption, there is a chance they could gain some anyway.
The difference in the two is that in my situation, the attacker is putting that risk in the hands of the person he is attacking, and in yours it is just dumb luck.
In mine, the would be attacker has options they can take to lower the risk of corruption (not attack a player within a few seconds of mobs that can easily kill the player they are attacking, attack or distract the mobs the player is trying to get to kill them). Additionally, in my suggestion, the player being attacked that decides they want to force corruption on to their attacker runs the risk of not being killed until after that few second timer runs out, in which case they will still die from the mobs attacking them, but their attacker gains no corruption.
Additionally, and this is the one key point, no one gains corruption unless they are involved in the death of another player.
As to your point about you thinking it is not the intention of the game that PvP players can force PvE players hands in Ashes - that is exactly the point of this game. Steven has said that if you have a spot and you want to keep it, you will need to fight others to be able to do so.
There is no such thing as a PvP or PvE player in Ashes. It isn't trying to bring the two game types in to one game and then keep them separated, it is trying to bring them in to one game any join them together. All players will need to PvE, and all players will need to PvP. If you refuse to do either one of these, this game is straight up not for you.
Also, just thinking through the Green dies intentionally scenario - I imagine the loot loss % may control the frequency of that edge case. The purple (killer) player may gain some corruption from that death, but would get 100% more certificates from the encounter.
That % loot gain may further justify killing a player if they are already gaining corruption from attacking the green.