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Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Topic: Should groups over a certain size, such as raids, automatically be marked as combatants?
Dolyem
Member, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
A thought occurred to me that if open world PVP fights progressed into largescale battles over periods of time, a large raid/zerg group of players starting out of combat could potentially insert themselves directly into a fight and wait for the proper moment to attack, staying unflagged to either get killed and cause corruption on purpose or to just obliterate everyone once the opportunity favors them. A simple solution is to mark raids as combatants, the only loophole being players in several regular groups working together, although I suppose the deterrent for that would be friendly fire once they are all flagged. Just a shower thought. What are your opinions on this potential "exploit"? And yes I acknowledge testing needs to be done.
Edit: made a strawpoll for funnsies https://strawpoll.com/polls/1MnwvMkwLy7
Edit: made a strawpoll for funnsies https://strawpoll.com/polls/1MnwvMkwLy7
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Comments
1. PvP is voluntary. If you are involuntarily flagged, for whatever reason, then PvP becomes involuntary.
2. Since it is open world, we will often see multiple parties doing dungeons & raids together. So, if a potentially hostile party comes along then one or more of the cooperative parties can flag and take care of the hostiles, and a core party can continue with the mobs.
3. I suspect that others can come up with additional reasons.
Maybe have it work with proximity for guilds? No idea how the coding for that would work so I dont know how hard it would be but if you have a similar number of guildies in an area that resemble that of a raid, maybe mark everyone as combatants? maybe exempt towns/cities from this affect for obvious reasons. I am not going to sit here like I have the answer, I just see the potential problem and want to see some solutions
Sometimes we'd even have "sacrificial" attackers that would PK the 3rd party's healers so that they couldn't kill us as easily. If Ashes has 3+ sides fighting over some content, I'd definitely have several glass cannon players with 0 PK count just to kill healers of any 3rd party. And then I'd tell those players to go and cleanse their PK count so that they can repeat it again in the next fight.
If the 3rd party tries to save their healers by flagging up - there's no issue for us, because the healers will still go down (because now they're being assisted by multiple people at once), while we get no corruption. And if the 3rd party doesn't flag up, then they're not attacking us and we're fine with that too.
Well if you start a raid knowing that it flags you, that would be voluntary. Not to mention, you don't have to engage in pvp with anyone, its just a deterrent for an exploit by zergs.
A group(8 players) wouldn't be affected by the proposal I offered, I only aim this at zerg status groups. Technically open world raids are very open to pvp intervention, otherwise they would be in instances. This would be as simple as having a secondary pvp focused defense group watching the raids back, which I would assume is what most people already intend to do even without this feature. Raid bosses will be fought over by players regardless of this features implementation. And before you say "corruption will prevent that", all an attacking raid needs to do is send 1 group in who dont care about corruption gain and start beating your raid down, and either only 1 ggroup will be affected with corruption allowing for either a raid boss take over depending on the damage done to it already, or a boss reset where they have a full raid as non-combatants swooping in to take it over. The other outcome is you fight back anyway and the entire raid moves in to kill the combatants or cause corruption themselves.
Or is this a hypothetic where say 30 randoms vs 30 randoms, with another 30 greens are just standing around?
But how is that better than keeping a level playing field and preventing loopholes in mechanics like you just mentioned? Everything you described is more or less just a flawed design for PvP engagements.
I mean, why not both? share your thoughts on either but I was focusing on the hypotheticals.
I know you're a PvP guy so I would actually love to hear your reasoning
In those situations.
Its the concept of a spontanious 60 player fight, with a third faction just hanging out where this is more troublesome, and idk what kind of situation would lead to a clean 2 faction fight of that size group without a node or guild war
And if it is spontaneous, and not for a more over arching purpose, who cares how it goes? Even if some people try and use being green to get out ahead at the end of it
Well yes, but what about guilds who arent flagged for war but end up in this situation? Especially for boss raids in my comment above.
Elaborate, I cherish you opinion.
A guild who is geared up and in a 40 man raid group, just stumbling into a war zone filled with a huge number of already flagged players? Sounds like content to me... its an open world with pvp. Unfair situations will happen. I dont think you can act like you dont notice the 30+ high level green players that keep getting closer to the battle field. They may not be flagged, but tricks should be expected when at war.
Well all of that is fair, but why have that be the design? A design to allow for manipulation of a system for an advantage? Why not attempt to make it better?
Here’s what comes to mind immediately -
One, I’ve had a lot of dumbass guild mates that start fights over nothing then expect us to bail them out. If I’m green, I’m ok with him learning his lesson without me getting dragged into his mess.
Two, it could unintentionally flag lowbie members of that guild in an area where there’s a war brewing, which could jeopardize what they’re working on.
Three, I really do like the flagging rules as they stand - having a modifier to those rules because I belong to a social group (beyond stated guild wars) doesn’t quite work for me.
Four, specifically for raid groups - I can see one person starting something dumb on the way to a raid and flagging the whole team, which could jeopardize the overall mission.
While I sympathize with your intent...
If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It
Your suggestion brings 0 change to the interaction itself. It only makes it much much much worse for literally any raiding non-pvp group of players. You know all those people that want raiding to be its own thing? You've just fucked them all over with your suggestion. Now they're permaflagged when going to a raid. Now literally anyone can just attack them w/o any penalties. Now anyone sees them from a mile away (even more than if they were just green), because they'll be a huge purple blob on the horizon. And now you've alerted every guild in the vicinity that there's a raid that just respawned nearby, because there's a purple raid running around.
All of those things limit the amount of potential gameplay variety (baiting PKs, having big group decoys, not engaging in pvp when it's more beneficial, etc), while not brining any benefit to the people that are affected by the suggestion. And people would still look for loopholes too. They'd not raid up right up until the boss/even location. They'd keep their distance from each other to not trigger the auto-system (if you go this way instead of just "raid = flagged"). They'd do whatever it would take them to avoid being auto-flagged for no apparent reason. So yet again, the suggestion doesn't give any benefit while brings detrimental changes.
Because the world isnt safe? Ashes is aiming for this player driven story. The whole design of the over arching game is for this open world pvp to be a major function. I already view becoming a combatant to be inviting literally everyone around me to fight. Someone has to flag first. Greens will always have the upper hand in options to fight back or use curruption to mess with you.
The curruption system in my eyes is a system to allow the small scale experience in the game to work. To limit single players from ruining other players time. To be in the later portion of the game, and affiliated with a large group, i see it as just a part of the world people will learn to be wary of.
And i mean, i also think it is a good thought experiment too. Its a good conversation topic also.
This is a pretty solid argument although I can't say what I stated isn't a massive problem as well, but all of what you said are definitely valid points. I will say however, Open world raid bosses will likely no matter what, be greatly affected by PvP. And what I mentioned earlier about this same exploit being utilized to wipe raids on bosses will be just as big of a problem as what you're stating here. The current design is still flawed from what I can tell, and a better solution than "Well just manipulate the current design" is desirable. Also I don't see an overwhelming need to protect massive groups of players with systems that are made to prevent ganking.
But I digress, I will play it with the current system in place. I will manipulate it in the ways proposed to gain the advantages mentioned. And I won't gripe about it when it is done to me. But I won't say it is a good design.
A solution looking for a problem that doesn't exist.
Why should a guild that formed a raid and is heading to a raid be flagged? I have yet to see any valid excuse.
Just because you see a mob of people heading somewhere does NOT mean they are out looking to roll over people.
The guild thing was more or less a quick thought, but to remedy your concern I would say to only affect players above a certain level.
As far as my raid suggestion, simply being in a raid has everyone in the raid flagged as combatant, not just if someone in it goes and smacks someone. That however leads into my third statement to answer this and your 1st reason....
... Stupid is as stupid does, some people are stupid and act up, but its as simple as not keeping them around. I have always said to give every opportunity to those around you to mess up, makes it easy to figure out who to keep around or boot out of your life.
Also for number 3. I enjoy the current flagging rules as well, but only as far as small scale pvp goes. I cant help but worry about the large scale open world flagging.
So his main issue is essentially the act of an organized suprise attack by a clearly visible enemy, just because:
You already being flagged gives them the upperhand.
Them being green means you cant take preventitive action without risking going red.
But at the same time this issue isnt going to be a world boss problem, because the players fighting the boss are the ones who will stay green and have the upper hand. And the new commer raid group will be risking curruption for killing them while they stay green to force them out.
It is a good thought experiment. But seeing how these situations happen in game under the current system would probably be better than overly complicating the system for an issue that may not occur often.
Honestly I see the corruption system as a small scale deterrent for griefing. Large scale pvp is very different. And to say the world isnt safe (and acknowledging the risk vs reward mentality) would making large groups combatants add to both of those concepts?
And I agree, I am actually loving all of the arguments against, at this point I am just dissecting everything to find as many holes as I can. Definitely comments with some things I didnt think of.
I acknowledged this with this problem earlier
But even outside of that, depending on how ow bosses are balanced and designed, you might not even need a huge group of people to mess up a raid. If the boss is tuned in such a way that you need near-perfect gameplay - any solo rogue willing to go red against the raiders' healer will wipe the raid. He'd be green coming up to the raid because he's alone, so the raid itself would have to immediately go red against him to prevent him from doing anything.
And in your suggestion, that raid would be flagged, so the rogue would not even risk anything at all. Hell, it could be a few rogues in stealth just fucking up everyone and everything. Or it could be a group of people that boost the boss' power because its people limiter went over and now he's "enraged". This would also wipe the raid w/o the newcomers flagging up or really even doing anything.
We've yet to see how exactly Intrepid are planning to design their top lvl pvx content, so we'll have to wait till then to really see all the potential exploits. I definitely agree that there's at least a few obvious ones, but Intrepid might've already come up with some mechanics to prevent that, so I think it's a bit silly to worry about that before we know anything. Though your concern when it comes to ow bosses is definitely valid. The concern about "two sides fighting and then the 3rd comes and beats the winner" - not so much, imo
As such, I see no reason at all why what some may consider dirty tactics shouldn't be a thing.
I wouldn't want to see tactics like this be viable when fighting over a caravan, a node or even a world boss (my expectation is that these will be subject to battleground rules - though this is not confirmed). However, for just open world fights because someone dissed your mother or what ever, I see this kind of thing being possible to be a good thing for the game, not a bad thing.
Thats fair honestly, what suggestions would you make regarding fighting over a caravan, a node or a world boss?