Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
Ocean content will be for large, strong guilds only. This includes any cross continent trading.
Did people once think anything other than this would be the case?
That Small island in the middle of the open sea and between the continents, i kinda expect it to be Ashes' "Freedish Island".
As a fellow Archeage player what do you think @Noaani ?
Will it still count as part of the nodeless open sea or it will fall under the corruption system?
Aren't we all sinners?
Yeah, that is my expectation as well, honestly.
I wouldn't be upset at all if it was more akin to Growlgate Island though - I spent a lot of time there.
Considering that some people complain about their personal exploration of the world or that some guildless people have this One Piece fantasy of recruiting people during their naval adventures.... Yes. In my read, a number of people do thing that they will be out there on a ship exploring the seas and complain about how the auto-flagging will affect their enjoyment.
Even some PvPers seem to thing it will be a dingy or raft free for all, instead of Man-O-War vs Man-O-War.
I can see aquatic mounts being of value in three distinct situations.
Fresh water- rivers or lakes of what ever.
Coastal areas - within sight of land.
In the ocean if you are stranded, as a means to get back to shore.
If you are on a mount out in the ocean, a warship is unlikely to bother you - but you also likely have no real business being out there.
lol, my man, there are islands to go to! (And hopefully a bunch of smaller ones too, not just those big few we see on the map.) I don't know what's out there but I intend(ed?) to find out. I can't just not be taking pictures of the sights from all of the good perches I might find out there.
Aquatic mounts might work for this, as you say. Might not. I guess we'll see what type of player base this new policy attracts; something far more important than the mechanical effects of the policy itself on the player base you'd have had before it was announced.
Exactly.. but this is not only gonna happen in the open sea imo. Strong guilds/corporations will control many of the important places on the map. Not all the map of course and not 24/7, but many PoI and most of the time, until they don't need them anymore.
The only thing corruption (as it is described atm) would provide, apart from protecting lower level players, is some small protection to smaller groups that go near those places for exploration or content, basically making the players protecting the PoI think twice before killing them. Intrepid will probably need to increase significantly the effects of corruption to avoid that and make sure there are no 'shortcuts' for removing it.
Without corruption in the open sea there is no reason for the top guilds to not attack on sight, gaining all the rewards with minimal risk.
Will another guild challenge one of the top guilds for control of a PoI on land or the open sea? sure, it will happen from time to time, as it happens in sandbox mmos.. but then the 'winner' will continue the cycle.
I was fully expecting them in the ocean due to the mounted skills system. In the old model a warship would probably leave them alone and I was expecting the higher maneuverability plus these skills to cover a certain gap that meant it was too much work to randomly kill a green on said mounts.
Now I'm fully expecting people to just waste potion launcher ammo shooting at such people depending on how cheap it is. Maybe ballista ammo if they let us have those on ships. They might have niche uses in exploration, but I doubt they will be prevalent at sea now. The risk on the attacker is practically zero now and the mobility of the aquatic mount is less relevant when you can just use what are effectively siege weapons on them.
I agree that those three use cases you stated are probably where we will see aquatic mounts most though due to the recent change. I'd fight you on the 'no business being out there' bit but given the most recent change to the open seas makes you completely right I think trying to explain explorer type mmo players is a bit fruitless with you. I have no interest in making that part of the conversation.
if anything we will see more people continent hop or explore on a water mounts vs ships if there actively avoiding pvp - and people do have business out there they could be gatherers etc.
Perhaps it is just a limitation of the difference between combat and naval combat. In combat, you become a combatant when you attack and cause damage. In naval combat, I presume there will be collision damage... ramming will be a thing? If I ram your boat, I will damage you, but I will also take damage from your boat.
Maybe this is a compromise that helps the game move forward with a minimal impact and eliminates the need for a complex solution.
I am obviously guessing, but this seems like a possible explanation to me.
Until it doesn't. There's still coastal waters, where all of these questions need to be answered.
I agree it will be the case to an extent. That's generally just the way it goes, he who has the most players. The Kraken, or whatever the ultimate end game ocean boss is in Ashes will certainly only be for large, strong guilds. My 8 man shouldn't be able to take it on even if we get no interference from pvp.
But this is part of Intrepid's job, to design the map, the layout and spatial order of content, and diversity of intended group sizes for content, in a way where the game doesn't become a giant zerg fest. Where there is content types for 8 mans, 20 mans, 40 mans and 300 mans.
A 300 man can certainly go to an 8 man content area and "win." But it should be extremely inefficient to do so. To the point where, per capita, they could have made more money just walking right outside their city and grinding the nearest mobs for the same time period. Just a loose example, but you get the drift.
That's the way I envision it at least.
From my understanding, a Kraken raid boss would still fall under the territorial waters of a Node's zone of influence, as the appearance of raids and the like are related to a node's progress. Also the XP earned through that kind of PvE goes towards the node's progression.
So ultimately, the international waters sections of the seas and oceans, might not even have Raids and dungeons. Thus rendering the open PvP more valid.
As for your other points regarding group and guild sizes etc.:
Guilds that spec fully into increasing the base player limite (currently between 30 and 50 players) can't spec into other paths. It might be the case that a guild of 50, becomes far more fearsome at sea, if they happen to have a naval combat tree to spec into.
Also from other livestreams, some raids will adjust their difficulty to the number of players and how fast you kill each boss. So going into a raid meant for 40 players, with 300 players, might be fun for the first boss, but hell for the second.
Additionally loot meant for 40 playes, to be shared amongst 300? Expect a mutiny.
As a short addendum: wasn't there a world boss in WoW that instantly wiped the party if more than X players were present in his "arena"? That could be a way to deal with it as well. Not for all raid bosses, but a good number of them.
That may be the case, I have no idea. But what I was talking about applies to the lawless sea and the entire world. Large and strong guilds will have a certain amount of power because they are large and strong. They will exert that power sometimes, whether it's the lawless sea or corruption mechanic areas.
I'm just assuming Intrepid will design the map and layout of content to where it's not exactly efficient for large groups of players to repeatedly mob content areas designed for smaller groups.
The max guild size is 300 by the way according to the wiki. (Edit: oh I see what you're saying now, the max size is 30-50 if a guild chooses all available skill options) I'm not sure about the WoW boss, that sounds kinda cool but very griefable lol
Edit, because I didn't fully understand your post, but do now. Yeah I'm very intrigued to see how much of a difference the guild upgrade paths make in encouraging people to keep their guilds smaller. Also intrigued to see how that "forced" segmentation could cause actual large guilds, who split their members up into a bunch of smaller guilds for the benefits, to splinter. I think it'll be hit or miss. Some guilds will maintain unity, some maybe not.
"Additionally loot meant for 40 players, to be shared amongst 300? Expect a mutiny." - Essentially my point in a nutshell. Map design, economy design, loot drop design should (hopefully) make it to where large groups don't just go around mobbing everything.
So, I dunno why that would not include raid bosses and raids.
Nah, this wont happen.
A DKP system sort of coveres this for a guild that is a out twice as large as a standard raid (and thus what loot is intended to be split between), but when yoinget more active raiders than that, people need to get *something* for themselves out of a raid.
In my experience, what much larger guilds tend to do when there is little loot to be shared among many people, is they auction off the loot to those within the raid, and divide that coin to all present.
This keeps most people fairly happy. When people think about things and realize that they are not going to get loot if they attempt a mutiny anyway, the idea of leaving the guild getting the top end loot in order to get more top end loot does come across as a little silly to most players.
It also makes splitting loot between many guilds of an alliance far easier.
Large guilds break up, without a doubt. But if they are getting the bulk of the best loot on the server it isnt because of loot that they break up.
The key thing with this though, is that Ashes needs to have many tiers of loot in the game. As I said kn an earlier post, Archeage had over a hundred viable tiers of gear at the level cap. While your guild may not see you getting the absolute top tier of gear (I actually dont expect anyone in Ashes to ever shave the top tier of gear), you should still be better off in the guild than not in the guild.
Do Corrupted auto-flag to Combatant in the Open Seas?
Is it easier to reduce Corruption Score there?
🤔
Definitely want answers for this. But my assumption would be they remain corrupted and are a larger target at sea since there are many there already expecting pvp, so they'd look forward to possibly getting gear. Also that'd be a fun bounty chase. As for grinding corruption off I have no idea
Strictly speaking, the answer will always be yes if there is any Open Sea content that can be used for this at all.
If you are corrupted, you are in danger from greens, on land, you can't beat them without gaining more Corruption.
At sea this is impossible. If you have the option to try to work off your Corruption at sea and have the means to do it, you basically always should.
I'm learning from all the ArcheAge stuff! It's really enlightening!
Fair point. I wonder if that would be intended. Otherwise if it wasn't I would put a tracker system for all in the ocean to see corrupted at sea to deter that.
But…maybe what Steven said is everyone is auto-flagged for PvP content.
It'd be a good way to get the 'Pirate' feeling back into the game, though. You could attack people in Coastal Waters, go Red there, and then escape into the open seas.
I don't currently see any reason this wouldn't be intended gameplay, given what the Seas themselves are 'for'. The risk of 'having to deal with Greens' is explicitly not supposed to be there.
Ooo I like that
It’s not more risk and a boon for Corrupted.
Potentially. Needs to be clarified if it is part of the design or not. That would definitely make bounties more fun