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
as a largely non pvp player if i felt it was inconsistent with what is and isnt a corruption enforced zone it would be quite annoying and thus the discussions now rather than later
i personally would need to just see the systems all interacting at once to see how it all feels before getting mad or happy with it but it comes across to me currently as just its an area outside the law influence of nodes thus it doesnt have rules since the nodes dont reach there -- even if this isnt the thought behind it it's just how i understood it as it is for now
To be fair, I have been telling you for years that Ashes is not the game for you.
The fact that this small (and expected, tbh) change is all it took for you to realize this is actually somewhat refreshing.
This announcement is straight up not a surprise to me. It isn't something I would have ever got in to a discussion with you about - because I knew full well you would pull up the discussion you posted a few posts above, and without something specifically from Steven, I would have nothing to say in reply other than "this is my expectation".
As such, all I was left with was a fairly hollow "based on discussions with you for many years, based on knowing what the goal of this game is, and based on having known Steven (peripherally) as a gamer, this game is probably not for you".
It's always been...I'll wait to see...but...
Now I don't have to wait until Alpha 2 to know.
As @Noaani said, this will probably just affect a small portion of the map.. And isn't it good to have a break in pace? a dangerous area where you will need to think twice before entering? the sea will be dark & full of terrors!
I say follow your initial plan of waiting for Alpha 2 to know
Fair enough.
Hopefully Darkpaw make another MMO.
PvPers enjoy that.
I am a carebear, casual challenge/hardcore time player... who sometimes enjoys manually flagging for PvP... but, really, I don't like to play MMORPGs on the same servers as PvPers.
Corruption was a possible compromise to get me to try it, but... zones where we are auto-flagged as Combatant and there is no Corruption, especially where there are unique NPCs and unique treasure-finding opportunities, is a deal-breaker for me.
I don't need Alpha 2 to help me determine that.
Truthfully it is kind of hard to see how this game is for you. You are just so anti pvp unless you want it in that specific moment. I love pvp and even I expect to wind up in pvp at times I don't want it in this game. But you seem to just have near zero tolerance.
But I don't think you're quitting. I think you'll at least give it a try. Maybe I'm wrong.
" I WONT be playing..."
"I DONT enjoy..."
"I AM a casual carebear PvE manual flag..."
Stop putting yourself at the center of this. This whole thing reaches insanity. Why would you test a game for which you said all of the above? As for the PK system it doesnt need testing. It worked in L2. Stop this madness.
Pretty sure everyone else will still be playing, regardless of whether I play.
hope they do the same for world bosses with open pvp zones
I assume now you are all for instanced content in Ashes.
If not, why are you making this argument?
I didn't say that.. fix your quote please
I will have to press X to doubt and ask for a Steven's quote on that one.
Aren't we all sinners?
I mean, we could list off all the things in Ashes that L2 has and Archeage doesnt, and then all the things in Ashes that Archeage has and L2 doesnt - but I honestly think one of those two lists would be empty.
I still see it as a consistency problem. If the corruption system was designed to take all of this into account on "land", why chuck it out the window at "sea"?
Did the design break down somewhere? I would like to hear the rationale from the team, if possible!
How can it not be a surprise?
Making this arbitrary change to a certain area of the game, in my opinion, invalidates the design of the corruption system for the rest of the game -- because it was designed to take all of this into account.
explain how it invalidates it. Because both land and sea even with these differences are still PvX. You have land which is lawful, and sea which is lawless. Sounds like a great dynamic to me.
Even considering that Archeage's Creator(Jake Song) is literally a former Lineage Dev, Archeage certainly share many concepts from Lineage 2, but even the Ashes wiki has listed more inspirations from one than the other... https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Inspiration
But, instanced content also worked in Lineage 2, so i don't know how it wouldn't work in Ashes aswell, even if it's quantity isn't going to be very big compare to other more PvE-centric MMOs.
Aren't we all sinners?
It isn't surprising for people that Played Archeage and knows that Archeage is one of the greatest inspirations for Ashes, for those without those 2 informations it can certainly look "arbitrary" or "inconsistent".
It certainly doesn't invalidade nor dimishes the corruption system.
Aren't we all sinners?
So, I played ArcheAge pretty hardcore from alpha. Saying "because ArcheAge did it" is not valid, since this game is also very specifically departing from ArchAge's design in many ways, on purpose.
The reason this is surprising is because the corruption system was designed to *already account* for the varied types of players and gameplay, taking it all of the risk and reward.
It's inconsistent, because why is there suddenly and arbitrarily a new rule set for certain zones of the game?
This is a change in design that I believe deserves a more detailed explanation of rationale, because for over 5 years now it's been consistent with the corruption system. What changed? Especially when there has not been any players or play testing to inform it.
It invalidates it because it suggests the system's design was not good enough to actually solve the problem it was trying to solve. So why does it remain at all?
5+ years of them pitching and us hearing about the Corruption system, but suddenly an arbitrary "land is lawful, sea is lawless" makes sense?
And Steven is spending the money to create a game that fits the way he likes to play.
And he seems to be saying that I should not have believed Steven when he said Ashes would be different than EvE Online and ArcheAge... and the Corruption flagging system would be global, rather than having zones with different flagging rules.
("Everything is subject to change.")
His answer was:
"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."
So...adding a zone that is auto-flag Combatant with no Corruption is inconsistent with what he said when I asked him 4 years ago. It's fine for us to go with, "Everything is subject to change."
But, it absolutely is an inconsistent PvP philosophy for the Ashes game design.
The corruption system is designed to allow pvp but encourage players to have a reason for pking by adding a potential cost to it. On land, the area where you can spend most of your time, it will still be there encouraging players to have a reason before they kill someone. Their reason for removing it from the ocean was probably because the system isn't the best for ship v ship and the ocean was already intended to focus on high-level content that they wanted players fighting over.
If you want to assume that this change is because the corruption system isn't good enough then based off the fact the change they made was one to allow pvp in an area, it is implying the system isn't good enough at allowing pvp. So if you are going to say their corruption system isn't good enough then you are telling them that the penalty must be too high and they need to lower it so pvp is more common on land.
Interesting, so you had those 2 informations regarding Archeage and was still surprised by it? Quite Odd.
Is it really that surprising when one of the main inspirations from Archeage cited by Steven was its Naval Combat?
Is it really "inconsistent" when you hasn't tested it yet and one system simple doesn't interact nor influences the other and the functionality of the corruption system hasn't changed at all?
Who gets decides was is or isn't valid for the game design isn't me nor you, but Steven.
Still, i believe your desire for a more detailed explanation is valid tho.
Aren't we all sinners?
That isn't invalidating though, nothing about it means that the corruption system doesn't work, its simply a different zone with different rules. Not sure where you read anywhere or got the idea that they are abandoning corruption or something. And I have provided a possible reasoning in another comment