Low level PvP

I enjoy PvP, but one concern I have is being sub max level and being unable to participate fairly and enjoyably against players within a similar level bracket. PvP has a significant impact on any online game, and ineligibility to partake could potentially drive away new players interested in having a go.

New World had open world PvP, but nobody below 60 would flag for fights because higher level players would be in lower level zones for materials. Additionally, scaling was removed so that lower levels had no chance of fighting back. As there was no bracketed instanced combat for lower levels, PvP was pretty much non existent after 60s started to emerge.

Will there be buffers to who can attack who? I.e 60 can only attack a max level of 50 ( 10 level difference) this system is in OSRS wilderness

Will scaling exist in PvP? Exists in some games already

Will instanced battlegrounds be offered as an alternative for players in specific brackets?

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Burnzey

Anyway this topic is about

George_Black wrote: »

Burnzey wrote: »

Dude NcSoft is notorious for their pay to win models in their games. Congrats, you got a fat wallet you can dunk on anyone.

Again, you dont know what you are talking about. You just went "L2? What is this? Lemme google. L2 from NcSoft. P2w".
You are clue less, and the simple proof is that you started this topic with NW and it's subpar design.

Shut up for a bit and listen to what I am telling you. Good open world mmos dont get low lv players and high lv players into a conflict of interest.
If a high lv player is near you and you flag, you will get killed.
That's a big IF. Get that into your head.

You've listed one KMMORPG as your experience which is ultimately limited in scope of what MMOs offer. Most Asian MMORPGS are P2W, with NCSOFT being notorious for gutting the soul and spirit from games they aquire for profit purposes. A Google search of reviews and articles about L2 confirms this is the case. 12 years has probably led to your Stockholm syndrome

NW is listed as an example because it is what NOT to do in an MMO that shares a vision for open world conflict.

This topic is about inclusiveness of lower levels into the PvP scene through balanced mechanics that offer a fair, competitive play between players of similar level considering there is no bracketed, instanced PvP.

I don't see how discussing PvP content for sub max level players has rustled your jimmies so much

Burnzey

Hailee wrote: »

Why do we constantly have people coming into this forum and asking for an open world pvx mmorpg to stop having pvp and have more instanced content/walls between users.

Please. I implore you to read again the blurb about this open world PVX mmorpg and then come back and make suggestions.

If any of them involve instances or restricting pvp from pve Andy's then go and read it again until it sinks into your brain what this game is about.

Who said anything about stopping PvP?? I'm advocating for lower levels to have some footing into this content without being totally ragged on.

Alacrite

Burnzey wrote: »

New World had open world PvP, but nobody below 60 would flag... Additionally, scaling was removed so that lower levels had no chance of fighting back... no bracketed instanced combat for lower levels, PvP was pretty much non existent

I found that to be highly problematic too for a game that's designed for PvP. My friends wanted to enjoy the game but leveling was a very boring barrier to the "important" combat.

I like that Ashes has a flat scaling system, I guess similarly to New World. But New World required you to participate in open world PvP only for the hell of it. It's extremely plain and the risk/reward for a lowbie was practically non-existent. So really, New World kind of needed a level-variable scaling to give any reason for people to do the thing the game was designed around.

You genuinely don't need a fair playing ground to participate and enjoy combat. I think that is one of the main elements to MMO's in general: the growth of your character. There will come a time in Ashes, because of how common PvP interactions will be with its plethora of features, where you will have a feeling of how strong a level 35 is. You will have a threshold of how many level 20s you can handle at a time.

Obviously this is all being said while high on copium.

side note: alts will be relevant too because of the class system. should help widen the level range of the server for a longer period of time.

unknown

This content has been removed.

superhero6785

Corruption is the solution. It still needs tested & balanced of course, but griefing low levels will result in loads of corruption, followed by stat debuffs, town guards attacking you, & high level bounty hunters causing you much pain. The wiki has lots of information on PvP, corruption, and bounty hunting. That info should clear up your concerns.

Merek

Firstly, this game has no flagging. I can attack you whenever I want for whatever reason, level isn't relevant. It needs to stay this way for the rest of the game to function correctly, as it's created specifically with player conflict in mind. Outside of that, scaling and instanced battlegrounds shouldn't be a thing. I assume there may be some instanced PVP but I'm against it, themepark garbage.

However, I agree that a low level player should be able to participate in PVP at a level higher than cannon fodder, but it's purely dependent on the combat system the developers choose. If the combat leans more towards character skill, then you're shit out of luck.

Ludullu

Burnzey wrote: »

NW is listed as an example because it is what NOT to do in an MMO that shares a vision for open world conflict.

Except it doesn't share shit. It's a faction-based opt-in pvp game where anyone can kill anyone as long as both sides opted into the pvp. You're not punished for killing a lowbie. Faction-based pvp mmos are the fucking bane of pvp mmos' existence. They've ruined any credibility a pvp mmo could have.

And people keep bringing up L2 here because Steven literally took its pvp system, made it better and more casual/lowbie-friendly and said "go have fun". Now what he also needs to do is to add a proper gear balance. L2's gear tiers allowed lower lvled players to be at least somewhat competitive with higher lvled people. So if Intrepid manage to balance their gear tiers in the same way - lowbies might be able to have some impact in pvp.

L2 also prevented high lvl players from farming low lvl locations because they literally didn't get resources or XP from the mobs. I personally hope that it's the same way in Ashes. Have some step-based artisan progression where in order to move onto higher tiers of progress, you forgo the lower ones. Make a soft tie-in to the character's adventure lvl and make taking these steps a voluntary decision instead of "oh, you were at tier3 of gathering and picked up another flower? Now you're at tier4 and can't pick tier2 anymore. Sucks to be you".

This way casual players who don't care for pvp could gather low lvl resources w/o worry that some top lvl dude will come to annihilate them (not like corruption would allow this, but still). And if that player decides to go higher in their artisan progress - they'll have to risk more pvp, because they'd need to go up in adventure lvls and visit locations where there'll probably be more pvp.

This would also create a soft pvp ladder, where any new player could still find pvp around low lvl resources because there's casual players running around there, while said casual players could still pvp back just fine because the gear disparity isn't present. If anything, a casual artisan would probably have muuuuch better gear than a new player, because they've been farming stuff on the same adventure lvl and have made a ton of money doing so.

This interaction was the case on pretty much all L2 servers I've played. Now it was the case because top lvl people made alt characters to farm low lvl locations, but that was the result of a low playerbase and limited game design, while Intrepid could implement this kind of system as something completely intended and rewarded. Casuals would stay happy, pvpers would pvp each other instead of preying on lowbies (while still having the opportunity to go be a dick for 2-3 kills, before assassinating your own character with corruption). And it would be in line with the "risk vs reward" theme, because low lvl players would have way less risk, but their rewards would also be limited, while to get better rewards they'd have to take higher risks by leveling up and moving up the "ladder".

Cutie

Idk what new world server you were on. We had people flagging at lvl 10.

My biggest enjoyment from new world was low level open world pvp.

I purposely stayed lower lvl to shit on lvl 60's, it was genuinely the best experience ive had in ages.
Players would be so pissed after dying to a lvl 40 player. Wish I could have that experience again.

Ferryman

There is always players who PK others because they can and they consider it as a fun activity, regardless of the corruption system. Therefore, it can lead frustrating situations for lower lvl players. However, at this point it is hard to say how the open world PvP goes and which direction the rules needs adjustment. I am not sure how well this can be tested in upcoming Alpha 2 but at least when Beta phase starts. IF lower level players will get stomped by higher level players during the leveling process then something like that OP suggested about restrictions to attack lower level players could work perfectly fine. It is hard say any exact level gap without testing and knowing the power distribution between levels but that is not relevant atm anyway.

Ludullu

Ferryman wrote: »

There is always players who PK others because they can and they consider it as a fun activity, regardless of the corruption system.

Corruption system will prevent that PKer from doing it more than, maaaybe, a few times. You kill one lowbie - you're already in deep shit and are getting hunted by BHs. You kill another one? Now you can't kill anyone because your stats are in the trash and you'll have to grind for days/weeks to remove your future XP debt. Your gear will most likely break and some of it will probably drop, because you'll have to die multiple times with x4 penalties on each death.

Only a small fraction of the pvp population would be willing to just go kill low lvl players. And corruption will stop the majority of those people, and prevent others from trying.

Ferryman

NiKr wrote: »

Ferryman wrote: »

There is always players who PK others because they can and they consider it as a fun activity, regardless of the corruption system.

Corruption system will prevent that PKer from doing it more than, maaaybe, a few times. You kill one lowbie - you're already in deep shit and are getting hunted by BHs. You kill another one? Now you can't kill anyone because your stats are in the trash and you'll have to grind for days/weeks to remove your future XP debt. Your gear will most likely break and some of it will probably drop, because you'll have to die multiple times with x4 penalties on each death.

Only a small fraction of the pvp population would be willing to just go kill low lvl players. And corruption will stop the majority of those people, and prevent others from trying.

Yeah will see. This is something which is really hard to theorycraft without proper testing. Creating open world PvP rules is always a huge challenge because finding the right balance is so hard. Players are really good to find loop holes from the systems and sometimes the creativity in that field is amazing. 😅 Anyhow, there is of course a possibility that the restrictions and penalties are so high that ganking exist extremely rarely, for example, like in Albion's yellow zones which are low lvl PvP zones but in practice the non-consensual PvP is almost non-existing.

Ludullu

Ferryman wrote: »

Anyhow, there is of course a possibility that the restrictions and penalties are so high that ganking exist extremely rarely, for example, like in Albion's yellow zones which are low lvl PvP zones but in practice the non-consensual PvP is almost non-existing.

Definitely hope that will not be the case, but yes, we'll have to see what the testing shows us.

Dygz

Corruption is designed to deter PKing - especially ganking lower level characters.
There is no looting of "items" - just a portion of resources
The majority of PvP in Ashes is objective-based PvP.

We will test all this in Alpha 2.

Uboon

If one player is too low to have any reasonable chance of surviving a gank, then their best option is to take a beating and die, from what I understand of the Corruption mechanic. But I have an idea to help with this weird and uncomfortable behaviour:

Perhaps the weak gankee could type "/pray" and one of the gods may do some righteous smiting, depending on reputation or other mechanics. This would help the feeble, as just standing still and waiting to die is not likely to be enjoyable. But the odd godly lightening bolt could be fun, even if RNG'd.

bloodprophet

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/PvP
Equalized PvP

There will not be equalized PvP in the open world. There may be equalized PvP in certain arena battlegrounds under specific circumstances.[209]
34:59

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1duIKUf8gVs&t=2099s

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Leveling
There won't be any damage dampening due to differences in levels in either PvP or PvE.[9]

If I have a skill that does a thousand damage to a target of equal level I don't want my skill to do zero damage to a target that's five levels above me.[9] – Steven Sharif
1:33:30

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtVUiS7yAHE&t=5695s

That was a statement at one point by Steven saying 4-5 level difference would be doable in PvP but there would be no scaling/normalization of levels between players. Would need to look further to find the statement.

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Open_world_battlegrounds
Battlegrounds are objective-based events where PvP battles occur in the open world.[4][5]

The big key is the last two words in that statement. And I agree with the statement that most everything should be open world. Most certainly anything of meaning that delivers any kind of reward should be open world but alas they plan to have instanced arenas that provide temporary enchantments.

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Arenas

bloodprophet

L2 also prevented high lvl players from farming low lvl locations because they literally didn't get resources or XP from the mobs. I personally hope that it's the same way in Ashes. Have some step-based artisan progression where in order to move onto higher tiers of progress, you forgo the lower ones. Make a soft tie-in to the character's adventure lvl and make taking these steps a voluntary decision instead of "oh, you were at tier3 of gathering and picked up another flower? Now you're at tier4 and can't pick tier2 anymore. Sucks to be you".

This way casual players who don't care for pvp could gather low lvl resources w/o worry that some top lvl dude will come to annihilate them (not like corruption would allow this, but still). And if that player decides to go higher in their artisan progress - they'll have to risk more pvp, because they'd need to go up in adventure lvls and visit locations where there'll probably be more pvp.

This would also create a soft pvp ladder, where any new player could still find pvp around low lvl resources because there's casual players running around there, while said casual players could still pvp back just fine because the gear disparity isn't present. If anything, a casual artisan would probably have muuuuch better gear than a new player, because they've been farming stuff on the same adventure lvl and have made a ton of money doing so.

Lower level materials will be necessary to repair gear. The node system will be more open world and there will not be zone levels like other games. there will be a mix of levels both player and mob's.

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Gear
50:56

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0LQSMT83L0&t=3071s

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Mobs#Zones_and_mob_levels
Zones and mob levels

Dungeons, Raids, World bosses, Mobs, Quests, Events, Resources, Narratives and other content within a node's ZOI will have a diverse level range; but will scale with the advancement of that node and its racial influence.[11][12][13]

We don’t have a strictly level 25 zone. Instead, that zone might have some level 10 creatures near the road, some level 20 creatures deep in the forest, and some level 30 creatures up the mountain. These ratios will change based on the Nodes that inform them, becoming generally more dangerous as the Node grows. All this civilization attracts the attention of Things-That-Should-Not-Be. This does not mean that wilderness areas are safe, by any means. Some may be safe-er, but all will have dangers that even the most experienced traveler needs to watch out for.[14] – Steven Sharif

Ludullu

bloodprophet wrote: »

Lower level materials will be necessary to repair gear. The node system will be more open world and there will not be zone levels like other games. there will be a mix of levels both player and mob's.

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Gear
50:56
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0LQSMT83L0&t=3071s

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Mobs#Zones_and_mob_levels
Zones and mob levels

Dungeons, Raids, World bosses, Mobs, Quests, Events, Resources, Narratives and other content within a node's ZOI will have a diverse level range; but will scale with the advancement of that node and its racial influence.[11][12][13]

We don’t have a strictly level 25 zone. Instead, that zone might have some level 10 creatures near the road, some level 20 creatures deep in the forest, and some level 30 creatures up the mountain. These ratios will change based on the Nodes that inform them, becoming generally more dangerous as the Node grows. All this civilization attracts the attention of Things-That-Should-Not-Be. This does not mean that wilderness areas are safe, by any means. Some may be safe-er, but all will have dangers that even the most experienced traveler needs to watch out for.[14] – Steven Sharif

Yes, all of those things are true, but if high lvl players/gatherers can still benefit from killing low lvl mobs - they'll fight low lvl players that are farming those mobs/resources and will just annihilate them in pvp. And I personally think this should be avoided.

bloodprophet

Perhaps, Maybe, maybe not. I forsee people not killing people in their own node. Why kill players helping to advance/maintain your home node ZOI. It also has ties to the economy over all. I see it as people buying and selling or gathering it themselves if they can but with the crafting system being interdependent players will need each other more so then in other games.

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Artisan_classes
Certain low level gatherables will have a tiered progression into higher level crafting. So for example you know if I'm gathering... leaves of the blue petal flower to craft a pigment that's going to be used in the development of a tunic that I can wear at level one, then I may need to collect those in order to craft the pigments to craft a greater pigment that might be present in the in the crafting of a higher level item. So it's going to be kind of a tiered progression so that materials have relevancy throughout the different levels of of crafting; and that's important from an economic stability standpoint. You need to have layered demand from a supply standpoint so that players who are interested in collecting and gathering those materials still are relevant when the later level items are crafted.[19] – Steven Sharif

50:56

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0LQSMT83L0&t=3071s

I see players not being divided up by levels as both good and bad. Seeing someone run by in high level gear can be inspiring and something to look forward to and achieve. The corruption system will hopefully quash the other side. Time will tell.
Needing low level materials to craft/repair items will keep them relevant long term and not just to players making alts or new people coming through. So many game fail on this front. Copper ore is only good very early then after a very short time span is completely forgotten by the larger community as it serves no purpose other then leveling what ever artisan class you have chosen.

Burnzey

Hailee wrote: »

Burnzey wrote: »

Who said anything about stopping PvP?? I'm advocating for lower levels to have some footing into this content without being totally ragged on.

They get into this content through group play like I mentioned before. You know. The MMO part of MMORPG.

Low levels won't get picked on by higher levels because they most likely won't be worth the huge corruption hit.

The game is designed around groups and social interaction and isn't intended to be a solo game. If you want that go and play wow and you can BG in your level group and run on a hamster wheel all day.

Right, and why would a low level player want to or even be included in this group play when they offer nothing in terms of damage and survivability?

Min maxing is a thing. It will always exist, and while it does, players will be excluded.

This is the issue. There is no inclusivity if low level players can offer nothing to the group play other than spectate as a ghost.

This isn't about hamster wheels. This is about allowing players of all levels to enjoy content of the game. This can be done through temporary scaling, bracketed instanced PvP combat or soft caps on who can attack who.

A corruption system may deter a higher level player killing a lower one, but then if the lower level player has free reign to capture points without repercussions then it's not fair on the higher player for engaging in combat to defend the node. But then it's unfair for the lower player because they've just been used as fodder and have taken up a group party slot.

CROW3

Corruption is suspended in structured pvp events. If you’re level 20 guarding a caravan and it’s attacked by a level 50 guild - you’re going to die a few times without repercussions.

Open pvp is a different story.

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