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
Thank you. Exactly my point.
My stance has not changed. I don't play games like EvE Online and ArcheAge.
The change to the Open Seas does not conform with what Steven says in the video below.
Which is OK. It just means Ashes now falls into the list of MMORPGs I don't play.
mark 3:43
None of these things are problems under the corruption system as it was described?
Does damaging a ship flag you?
Yes, just like damaging a player flags you.
Does one flagged/corrupted player make the whole ship flagged/corrupted?
No, just like one flagged/corrupted player doesn't make the whole group they are in flagged/corrupted.
How do ship abilities like cannons work when only part of the enemy crew is flagged/corrupted? etc
The same way?
You mention these as 'issues', but the only 'issues' I see are that players would need to flag up to attack crews that are not 'all pirates' and therefore wouldn't give those crews more corruption. 'Incidental damage' to ships where some of the crew is flagged and some not (this wouldn't even need to be allowed) doesn't have to corrupt anyone anyway.
The main reason I don't understand the post is that everything would have worked without 'issues' unless we consider 'issues' to be 'it's more required for a ship to flag up' and 'players might not accrue corruption as much/correctly'.
'Solving' those 'issues' by removing any flag up and dismissing all corruption isn't a thing one does for the purposes of solving the issues. That would literally be going 'people aren't careful enough about forest fires, so let's burn the whole forest down', except even that analogy wouldn't work, at least in that case you'd have Controlled Burn with an actual purpose.
"Corruption doesn't work to protect people on the sea as much, let's just remove it so there's no protection at all."
If the above is a reasoning that was seriously used for this, even I would need to start to care about this situation.
If you do that you devide the game into areas for PvP and PvE. You can do that, but that was not the original idea for the game. Then you could simply have created two games or have different server types. The PvE players just wont go into these areas. And if you force them to (by putting important content there) you will loose them in the long run. Then you only have the PvP part left. The game might live, but it will not be the game that was originally envisioned. That sounds dramatic, but that is how it goes. Usually the developer changes things up before that happens and that is when PvPers complain 'the developer ruining the game by listening to carebears'.
My stance has not changed. I don't play games like EvE Online and ArcheAge.
The change to the Open Seas does not conform with what Steven says in the video below.
Which is OK. It just means Ashes now falls into the list of MMORPGs I don't play.
mark 3:43
I wanted to focus on the justification for the change and not the change itself.
As a PvPer, I love this change, but what irks me is the reasoning Steven gave for the change.
For open sea: Corruption bad for risk-vs-reward.
For land & coastal waters: Corruption good for risk-vs-reward.
If there was a design philosophy change, then come out and say it.. if there were other reasons, fine too! They can do whatever they choose.. they are the ones creating the game!
I just don't think that the justification makes sense.
Hopefully they will expand on it a bit more.
It does for about 80% the world.
If that 20% is enough to make you nope out, then nope out for good.
@Dygz I think this is why, as a PvP-er, I see your departure as bad.
This is the same way that Fighting Games die, their communities cannibalize themselves because the vocal supporters of whatever annoying/stressful mechanic, react with 'rejection'/'hostility' to anyone who 'doesn't like it and hopes the developers change it'.
The community fractures, with the defenders becoming more and more insular, the game population becoming smaller and smaller and more focused on 'defending their beliefs from others who don't agree' even those who are just 'explaining why they don't play' or 'why they prefer other games instead', sometimes quite literally when asked ('hey why don't we see you for matches anymore?' and 'hey I heard you quit, what happened?')
To me, people having these sorts of reactions to you becoming the norm is a big red flag for an unsustainably niche game, but that's subject to goals.
You've been here longer, so I ask you, was there ever an impression given by Steven, that Ashes is supposed to be bigger than ArcheAge? I can see how the entire plan might just have been to make a game that has maybe two servers per region and call it at that, but subtleties like that won't be on a wiki.
People noping out of a game because what amounts to less than 20% of the world is open world PvP without the corruption system, is essentially throwing a tantrum.
Oh but it is a about that. Imagine you're playing a world made of 10 squares. You can play on all of them. On 8 of those you have the normal rules, on 2 of those you don't.
BUT, to play in those 2 squares, you first of all need to be of high enough level to gain enough money to buy a ship. Once you've bought that ship, you need to have enough people to staff it with. And you wanna have cannons.
So going to those 2 squares already requires an investment in time, money and resources that would lead all those who have done so, to go there for the exact premise of said 2 squares.
You won't just be swimming around, and doing stuff there, with people ganking you. If you're there with a ship of your own, you're basically going there to PvP as a combattant anyway.
If you're there as part of a Caravan, then you're already there as Combatant as well.
In what scenario are you, as a green, going to be in the middle of international waters just fucking about?
They're not really gonna put resources there, because resource gathering and its related XP goes towards a Node''s XP, and international waters don't count towards that.
They won't disable it in dungeons because in dungeons you're there to PvE. In international waters, where there is nothing, you're there to PvP anyway. So there is no griefing there.
And if you're "just trying to cross the sea to the other continent" well hey, you get to be on edge for all of 10 minutes. Which is pretty much how long it'll take to cross the sea between the two continents.
I shall repeat myself, but in land and coastal waters, whatever it is you do, contributes to your Node's XP. Therefore if you don't have the corruption system there, someone could gank everyone in an area to prevent any XP from going to a node and leveling it up.
In international waters, there is no such mechanic or risk to the game. As I said before, if you're there, you're there with full understanding of what goes on there.
Plus they mentioned in previous discussions, that if one player on a ship attacks another ship, the whole ship would have turned combattant. This could have been a pain in the ass for someone being victim of a troll. Now at least, no one can troll anyone, you know exactly what your status is once you reach international waters.
Thus I disagree entirely in that they're inconsistent.
Just because you can't put two and two together from all of the systems that are there, doesn't mean that their choice is a bad one. You'd think that the developers, developing a game, with all the data and knowledge of their own systems, might be making a more educated decision, over some people on the forums who just want to prevent anyone ever in the game from trying to kill anyone without going corrupt, including when you're not in an area with any form of government to sanction it.
So yeah, everyone whining and threatening to leave the game is just throwing a tantrum for the game not catring 100% to their desires or not understanding things fully.
I think, for him, it just needs to be big enough for him to support enough staff to keep the game running after launch.
This is very close to my concern. To HleV’s point, though I know it’s not the intention, a slippery slope has been introduced for PvX without a sufficient explanation.
More interesting for some yes. Mainly the PvP players. The original idea was to have both together. If you make one area more PvP than others the player base will devide. The PvE will avoid the PvP heavy zones and the PvPer will go there because there is more of the content they like. This might even be good for the PvE players because now they have less PvP players in the light PvP zones of the game. You still have PvE and PvP content, so it is still a PvX game, but the content is now more segregated and so is the player base.
There are many ways the game can go from there, but I personally think its not a good direction.
So in your mind, the devs should be held hostage by the one Dygz in a hundred players, who throw an entire game out of the window because they only get to enjoy 80% (or more) of a game?
How is his position not more harmful? It's entirely based on his own preferences for a carebear PvE experience (by his own admittance, not even as some sort of dig towards him).
If he doesn't like a small section of the world doing something he doesn't like, then why should he get to tell everyone else we're wrong for liking something he doesn't? And that ideally the game should change to cater to his desire for absolutely no free PvP area ever.
International waters are essentially one big Caravan system. You're there opting into the consensual PvP experience. If you don't want to opt into a caravan, you stay away from it. If you don't want to opt into the international waters, you stay away from them.
You wouldn't tell the devs that they need to remove the caravan system because if there are 5 caravans going from one node to the other, you've suddenly reduced the total amount of surface area where you can choose not to opt into consensual PvP.
I don't have anything to say to you, you can assume that anything you believe about my perspective is true and 'other' me as well.
Exploration of the ocean content was always part of what PvE centric players imaginged doing. So being alone on the ocean in a ship was something people wanted. Not so much anymore under the current circumstances.
You are right about the caravan, there is effectively no change there.
The rest are some heavy assumptions on your part. If you are right, i agree that we do not really have a problem. But I doubt it. I assume there will be resouces to be gathered there. Whether corruption will be active or not in dungeons in the ocean I have no idea. But I would image that it is deactivate there as well. If it is just a matter of going there undisturbed that would be managable. We need some clarifcations about this.
So you either have no defense or you're just here to ignore everyone else's opinion that doesn't conform with your own.
Fantastic reply. Pat yourself on the back brother.
If exploring there means I'm going to be auto-flagged as a Combatant... I'm not playing that game.
Because I don't play games that do that.
True. We agree. It doesn't mean their choice is a bad one.
It just means now the game is too much like EvE Online and ArcheAge for me to want to play it.
It should be a great addition to players who love EvE Online and ArcheAge.
LMAO
100% to my desires woud be a PvE-Only server.
Or to have total immunity from PvP, like I do on New World.
Corruption is the compromise that had me willing to play on the same servers as PvPers.
Precisely as Steven outlined when I asked him about how PvP works in Ashes.
Choosing not to play a game is not throwing a tantrum. Again, my stance has not changed from what it was 4 years ago. Steven made a change that placed Ashes onto the list of MMORPGs I don't like to play.
As your position is entirely based on your own preferneces for a PvP experience.
If you are fine with the corruption system there shouldn't be a issue when that is the majority of the game and you can still travel between places safely. Even more so if you didn't care about navel stuff to begin with.
This is the very tribalism @Azherae is talking about ‘fracturing’ the player-base. It’s not about @Dygz - it’s about the broader vision of PvX & Ashes.
Once it devolves into the us-and-them of ‘those care bears’ and ‘those griefers’, that vision is diminished, if not gone entirely, and that’s very difficult to retrieve. Then the game becomes either ESO or MO2. Fine in their own right, but not where many of us have understood Ashes was headed for years.
You may not realise this: but the coastal waters in a Node's ZOI is also the ocean. There will be plenty of content there, as that content is unlocked from a Node's progression. What would dictate the unlocking or spawning of international waters content? Seems to me like nothing.
Thus, content in international waters is susceptible to be scarce at best.
All sea/ocean content must by virtue of the game's design, be within the Node's ZOI. Thus: territorial waters. And not international waters.
That means that the dungeons will be in territorial waters, and that therefore the Corruption system applies.
Go further out to sea, then at some point (probably 5 to 10 minutes away from the coast) you're in international waters. Spend some more 5 to 10 minutes there and you're already on the other continent's territorial waters (at the closest point between the two landmasses).
He simply tells you what his reaction to this is. I am actually quite concerned that there are so few PvE players voicing their opinion here. It can be either very good (most pure PvE players do not really care about it) or very bad (most pure PvE players have already given up on the game). Or most simply missed the lifestream and have not yet heard about the change and did therefore not had a chance to form an opinion.
I did not say anything like other people are wrong for liking something I don't.
I have said, several times, this change should be a great addition for people who like EvE Online and ArcheAge.
It's a deal-breaker for me because I don't like to play those games.
Caravan system does not auto-flag people as Combatants just for being in the area. That is manual opt-in.
I'm going to want to explore the Open Seas without being auto-flagged as a Combatant.
If I can't do that - it's a game I won't play.
I didn't tell the devs they need to remove anything.
And, if the Caravan system was a deal-breaker for me when they first described the mechanics 4 years ago, I would have chosen not to play the game 4 years ago.
But, I don't play games that include auto-consent just for exploring a zone.
I don't remember ArcheAge or EVE having the smallest section of their games only be free PvP, I was under the understanding that their entire world (except maybe cities) was the case.
Again, I think yours is an extreme over-reaction. You have enough landmass to play within the parameters you do accept to give you the totality of your money's worth.
I'm not even a hardcore PvPers. In fact I mostly play FFXIV. But this change literally changes nothing in my eyes concerning the open world PvP.
If I'm to explore, new content will be created and added by a Node's progression. If there's no Nodes there, what content can there be?
Wanna take a guess as to what kind of NPCs will be treasure hunting in the middle of international waters? Pirates and some researchers.
Pirates screams PvP and treasure hunting does as well. Their quests will likely revolve around finding a player or ship and killing them or stealing a piece of treasure etc.
So I'm not seeing how this is inconsistent with the changes added there.
See that's where you're wrong. I don't like PvP in general. But this is a good decision for the Game and its design philosophies, it's appeal to players that do, and the reduction of the amount of PvP on land for everyone else.
I'm looking at this from the point of view of what's better for the game as a whole, which in turn will affect how good it is for the players.
You seem to be approaching it from the point of view of what is best for you alone, and your or Dygz's preferences.
I'm a primarily PvE player. My main game is FFXIV. Yet I don't come to this game expecting it to be what it's not. I come to the game, because it has a cool world and a cool vision, I think it will be fun to play in it.
People who claim this change is bad, are basically just wishing for the game to be what it is not and has never been.
So it's tribalism if one disagrees that a change should be made to the game that directly derails it from its original premise. Cool. Good to hear it.
People will already be fragmente. People are already making plans of spending their entire game being artisans. That's not going to be same experience as those who play mainly PvE raiding, or who open world and instance PvP.
So when does accepting that the smallest section of the total map is going to be autoflagging for PvP, become the toxic approach?
Because exploration there is going to amount to: water here. Water there. Maybe a treasure if I dive deep enough.
All the content is by definition of the game's systems, mandatorily within the zone of influence of a Node. Exploring the open sea, is basically navigating until you hit land aka another Node.