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
Sorry for the following wall of text:
From the best of my memory, from all the AMAs, QAs, fan videos, etc. that's not the only reason the corruption system existed, although it certainly is one of the reasons and there's also some lore involved, if you care about that.
What I thought was the best way to summarize the corruption system before the change to the open sea was: to enforce the fact that PKing in Ashes is not free of punishment, free of risk to the aggressor. That encompasses reasons such as griefing, protect low levels, etc. and also adds consequences and planning to PKing.
My understanding could be wrong, but even if you read some quotes from Wiki pages (1, 2, 3) you can somewhat see the direction they had, you can see in Steven's words that although he always said "this game ain't for everyone", he wasn't stupid and always chose his words carefully "making sure" PvE players always had the "protection" of corruption, which is now removed from a very important segment of the game. Respectfully, if one says the open sea is not important/unnecessary/"just don't go there", they're trying to find excuses for an unprecedent change in game design, which is easy to refute. If Intrepid removed PvP from a zone which would be an absolutely stupid decision, that now I don't doubt it could happen (could be an overreaction, but it's the same logic), PvE players will simply say "just don't go there", it's the same idiotic argument.
Removing corruption brings positive changes but it also brings negative changes, depending on your point of view. That's why in my opinion you should try to look at decisions from as many sides as possible to find out if the overall balance is good or bad for anything in life.
If you are able to take off your PvP Chad hat and put on your PvE player hat, like I am trying to do for the sake of logic and to understand what's negative about this change, then you might understand the inconsistencies, to say the least, of removing the corruption system from anywhere.
Corruption was removed from the open sea but apart from all the bullshit and excuses, forgive my French, it could've been open world dungeons and some of us would have similar arguments just swapping "open sea" for "open world dungeons". That's what, in my opinion, some of you fail to understand. The problem is not the where but the why. Ironically enough, I actually think that open world dungeons, raids and world bosses' radius would be a way better candidate to have auto flagging and no corruption, not an entire zone such as the open seas.
At the end of the day, I just want the game to thrive and to be its best possible version, and even though we still don't have a lot of information regarding Naval content, we had a lot of information regarding the logic behind the corruption system, and I'm not sure this change to the open sea makes the game better.
By territorial waters I mean the Ocean that is still within a Node's Zone of influence. A coastal Node's ZOI won't end at the coast, it will encompass a large section of all the world's Seas/Ocean.
A lot of people are talking about this like the moment you set oar to water at the coast, you're a free kill for some ganker and like people can't fish or explore that area.
I'm pretty sure the ZOI will be the same size as other Node's except its terrain is mostly Ocean instead of land.
The little fringes in between those (between continents) won't offer as much content for exploration as the rest of the world.
And hey, since you're 87% explorer, you get to explore 87% percent of the world under the protection of the corruption system.
Does the ultimate carebear Dygz represent 1% of the player population? Not even the player population, does he represent 1% of all PvE players remotely interested in playing Ashes? I would love to know where you got those numbers, they really help your argument.
A carebear position can't harmful, but you are right, carebear demands to make Ashes more PvE friendly can probably be very harmful to the game. I fail to see him demanding anything other than asking Intrepid not to make changes to the game design, in this case big changes related to PvP, 5 years after the Kickstarter campaign from his PvE player perspective.
Up until 72 hours ago, international waters had corruption and I never saw anyone complaining about that. Where were the PvP chads then? Unacceptable!!! Chads, unite!!!
Let's be honest, saying that the open seas are a "small section of the world" or somehow unimportant is just false. Also that argument falls pretty quickly if we try to invert the scenario: if Intrepid removed PvP from 20% of the hunting grounds, then it would be fine because we would still have the other 80% to PvX, right? Of course not, and that's why using a slippery slope fallacy is cringe af.
Last but not least, there's no such thing as consensual PvP in Ashes. PvP is forced upon you if an aggressor wants to. You may choose not to fight back, but you opted in to PvP when you logged into the game. Respectfully, your Caravan example is some next level mental gymnastics. Caravans have a specific goal, the open sea doesn't. Caravans are temporary, the open sea isn't. Caravans' "ZoI" represent nothing when compared to the size of the open sea. Caravans were part of the game since the Kickstarter, corruptionless zones weren't (afaik).
I honestly don't mean to gang up on you, but why are you so hostile? You gotta chill out, step bro.
Cheers
Just to throw it out there, I have made the suggestion for open oceans to have no corruption several times before this announcement.
And, I'm pretty much OK with that. There are a lot of MMORPGs I won't play. This is just one more.
I'm not asking for anyone else to join me. I haven't ranted about the game will fail or how IS now sucks.
It's all good. More PvP for the PvPers.
Shouldn't be any different than me sharing that I'm not playing EvE Online, ArcheAge or New World.
This is just as problematic because it's not PvX.
If I put this in product terms, PvX is a core market differentiator that has the potential of capturing a share of two lucrative consumer segments. Reducing the integrity of PvX erodes the capability of the product to effectively garner support of both segments therefore relegating it to one or the other, which already have better funded and established titles that would have to be disrupted accordingly.
TLDR: IMO - like it or not, the corruption system is a crucial commercial mechanism to Intrepid's success. Undermining its integrity undermines the long term value proposition of Ashes.
Yeah. No. There's supposed to be a lot of warnings alerting people they are moving into the free-for-all PvP zone. That's a good thing.
There's lots of Open Sea on that map and a Metro's ZOI is 1/5 of the map. So, I'm not sure what you mean by the same size as a Node. The same size as a Metro? The same size as a City? The same size as a Town?
I'm pretty sure the Open Seas are not "little fringes".
haha
More likely, I will just be playing some other game that doesn't have zones with 24/7, auto-flagged Combatant, free-for-all PvP combat.
Cant agree with this comparison. Open oceans with autoflagged PVP still involve PVP and PVE cohesion, therefore retaining the PVX format. Your hypothetical of no PVP in Land areas is just PVE, not PVX. Currently both the oceans and Land zones are PVX, but the Land zones have more punishment/restrictions for PVP, more systems in general via nodes, and likely a substantially larger portion of lore and gameplay(thats merely speculation on my part). The ocean has potentially more valuable resources, at the greater risk of entering a zone with no regulation or rules on PVP, and while it is said there will be content to explore there, it doesn't have nearly as many game design systems as the Land zones at this moment. Theres no nodes, no castles, no freeholds, its just a zone to potentially acquire more/rarer resources at the risk of greater danger that is content difficulty and PVP. And how you go about dealing with those risks is entirely flexible according to play style. You could embrace the fight and earn your loot through combat, or even potentially be a master escape artist and manage to out maneuver and out run hostiles while taking what you find from that dangerous world.
Even though I like the feature, I understand your point of view and that's why I don't think a discussion about 'is it a good or a bad feature?' can lead anywhere, since everyone likes different things. That's why I wanted to focus on the why.
I believe it is important for a developer to have a design philosophy (no matter who agrees with it) and every decision needs to be consistent.. there is clearly a shift here and the reasoning is inconsistent imo. Hopefully they will share more details.
If the game has zones that auto-flag you as a Combatant, you are pretty much auto-consenting just by playing the game. And...I won't play that type of game.
This is a definition we will likely always disagree on. Agreeing to a games rules and designs once you log in means you accept the outcomes that may happen, including being killed by other players without you wanting to be. Thus you are consenting to the possibility of being killed by another player, even if you don't want it to happen.
We're kind of conditioned at this point to just take what's given to us. Most of us are used to being second class citizens in our own genre. And frankly we're used to just not getting our way usually.
I've already expressed my shame earlier in the thread for not asking for the change. Because it truly is a good change. Kudos to Dolyem, apparently he has been asking for it.
Kind of this. George Black and Natasha touched on it in another thread. I've wanted to write about it in this thread, but I don't think I can do it without it becoming book length. And there's really too many unknowns at this point to accurately write about it anyway.
But in short, there will be a massive difference in the quality of sea battles with corruption system mechanics in place versus not.
Sure, let's throw an instanced pvp duel into that no-ow PvP example. We can probably determine exactly where that analogous balance point is. However, I think most PvP'ers would see this terrestrial area as a PvEr space just as most PvE'ers will now look at auto-flagged open seas as a PvPer space. That leaves us at a red v. blue Venn with very little purple in the middle.
IMO Intrepid's success through Ashes hinges on maximizing the purple.
So, I'm just very curious on the why behind this call, and the implications on the overall direction for PvX.
If I had to make a guess, the "why" whilst staying true to the whole games philosophy so far may be that it falls in line with higher risk for higher reward as Steven said. Not to mention, it is an area without node influence, so this system could help highlight that fact and provide a distinct separation between nodes where you can benefit your home through activities, and an area that has no benefit to anyone except what you can harvest from it to take back to your home node. Its also just a different option, which is a nice thing to have. Hard to really say what their reason for "why" is since I am not them, but thatd be my first guess.
With the change to having locations where we are auto-flagged as Combatant and Corruption is not a punishment, that is auto-consent just by playing the game.
So...we actually agree at this point. Which is why I won't be playing the game.
Said this in the other discussion answering your why, as far as what I can guess anyway
Subjectively, people can consider that to be just a minor inconvenience, sure.
It has always been the case that my decision to play is contingent on how well Corruption works as a deterrent for unwanted PvP combat. This change fails to meet my requirements. I'm just now able to determine that before testing it in the Alpha 2.
So, it's really not about whether you as an individual would kill me and not care about the Corruption penalties.
Yep - I saw that. Very well could be right. You and I could probably cobble together a solid justification given the lore and world, but that's just us playing with what we've been given. I just want to hear more from Intrepid.
I am totally down for that. Also if you want, I can show you some cool stuff I have done with the new map!
If the entire map is not PvX - if there are zones on the map where, when I want to explore, I am auto-flagged for PvP and there is no Corruption... I'm just not going to play that game.
Again, I specifically asked Steven about the Ashes PvP philosophy compared to EvE Online and ArcheAge.
And I specifically asked about ArcheAge because the naval combat of ArcheAge is what caused me to not play that game. This new change does not conform with the answers Steven gave me in 2018.
Dygz: EvE is a murderbox for me.
Steven: Well, EvE is a murderbox if you choose to go to the appropriate sectors, right?
Dygz: I don't know. I stay away from EvE because it's too PvP-centric for me. So... are you hoping Ashes will be at the same PvP level as EvE? Or are you hoping for something different?
Steven: Well, no. It is different, right? My hopes with regard to our battle is that it is meaningful. So, that means it is a decision on behalf of the risk taker whether or not the reward is worthy of the risk...and then, additionally, as a player who might be on the receiving end of a PK, they are aware that this choice of an opponent directly impacts them probably more than it impacts the death of their character. And I think there is a recourse for that character who got killed to go out and pursue that murderer as well and exact ther revenge and also participate with others in their community who are Bounty Hunters that will have an oppportunity to locate in real-time the position of that player on the map and that will sort of, kind of limit the ability of those players to really go out and cause havoc.
We compared Ashes with EvE's designated sectors. Steven indicted Ashes would not be like that in a variety of ways.
Now he is saying Ashes will be like EvE.
So... it's not really possible for Steven to be still respecting the original risk v reward philosophy.
Dygz: What about in comparison to ArcheAge??
Steven: Well, ArcheAge... You pretty much knew in any territory that you went to what the system of PvP mechanics were, whether it was a peace zone or whether it was a PvP zone, so...if you were to take risks, it was of your time and choosing, depending on how you moved your packs and what zones you went through in order to move them.
So, that really doesn't relate well to what Ashes is trying to do. Because Ashes is an open world and there are no zoned flagged PvP areas. Instead there is just a flagging system that relates to the other players.
Again...I asked Steven how the Ashes PvP philosphy compares to ArcheAge. The answer was it doesn't relate well because ArcheAge as zones with different PvP mechanics, whereas Ashes only has the one flagging system everywhere.
Now, Steven has said that Ashes will have mechanics like EvE Online and ArcheAge.
It now has the mechanics and features that made me not want to play those games.
"Just applying it to different areas" is a significant change from the original PvP philosphy. It's now too close to EvE Online and ArcheAge for my playstyle.
and the 2nd is, generally speaking, ship style combat has always been more of a group thing and not a solo thing so i doubt you'd get as much annoying ganking to happen since theres a lot of people out there who would be looking for the next crew to fight, win or lose. This actually makes it more likely i would partake in this with a group of friends/guildies since i wouldnt ever do it on my own anyway
i imagine if there is a single person ship for traveling (not a water mount) it probably would be fast enough to escape the big war ships anyway since it wouldnt be lugging anything
Just here to post said youtube comment. *flies away*
Could be useful here, too.
Thanks!
Doesn't hurt to post in again.