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
You shouldn't drop any equipped items, or valuable items.
It would be better to have safe zones for cities, quest hubs, and some part of the resource gathering places. So being close to the node's center is safe, and if you wander off, you could get attacked. The risk of corruption would be still there.
This way players who are not enjoying open world PVP would have their comfort zone, and people who do wouldn't have to stress about loosing something you were grinding for 2 months.
Dividing the nodes to certain zones is not hard to achieve, there are no technical limitations to implement this.
I mean, if my math estimate is right it'd be roughly 80 to 90 km of coastlines to be covered
I would nearly argue the opposite here.
If there was no auto flagging, i would want enough battle power to desuade people from attacking and take my chances.
With auto flagging, i know everyone i run into is going to try and sink the ship, so ammount of defences of a single vessel probably wont be enough if im unlucky, so instead i send 10 merchant ships, and 6 of them have nothing on them.
But we're still talking about the generality of 'pirates vs explorers/fishermen' technically.
And for those people, having to have more ships cuts into their profits (or if they lose them all, into their gaming time).
This is why I'm fine if the Open Sea is just 'useless', personally. Some trophy fish no one really needs, some strong but not interesting enemies, nothing of value to explore?
No longer matters if auto-flagging happens or not. But otherwise, explorers will probably 'get on someone's boat', possibly even paying someone with a good boat, then when a PvP crew spots that boat and goes to take it out, they arrive and find... players with no intention of a battle, who will then not even be worth killing/sinking.
But at least then, if the Ocean were 'useless', they would not need to 'worry' about it. In the standard system, you couldn't know that those 'explorers' weren't really 'people who had found cool content that they were on their way to'. You'd have to follow them, etc, using up all your PvP time just to 'make sure' they didn't get something before you if the Ocean had good stuff in it.
In the current proposed system, just sink them for being there and solve the problem.
I dont see the curruption system as disincentivizing pvp. Pvp is incentivized in fact with less death penalties. Curruption disincentivizes killing those who dont fight back.... who is not going to fight back when everything stored on their ship, and their ship is going to be lost? Simply being at sea further incentives pvp.
With this concept, you are saying all of the areas in international waters. Should be devoid of content. The only content should be the pvp battle ground.
Which furthers my point....... if the only people involved are pirates, attacking any ships they see, and merchant ships trying to trade between continents. Who isnt fighting back? What merchant ship is just letting their investment be sunk?
Ah sorry, I think I was misleading.
I also find this decision confusing and suspicious from the perspective of certain goals of game design that I consider positive/logical.
My point was that such a perception is subjective. Steven is a big fan of ArcheAge, and could just be trying to make an experience similar to the one in the link provided, and internal discussion led to the conclusion that this was the way to achieve it most often.
Or it could just be, as the many supporters of it imply, 'just okay for the lore', and then maybe it's a contradiction to the Corruption System's implied purpose, but not really to 'Risk vs Reward' because you have to look at those terms from Steven's perspective, which, if you research ArcheAge, might start to seem a little different.
tl;dr if Steven wants to re-experience the feelings from ArcheAge and wants others who play the game to have those same feelings, this decision makes sense even without testing, because Corruption was never meant to protect from PvP anyway, it's just a stopgap, so we should probably be expecting that any situation where Corruption CAN be 'reasonably removed' in future, it will be.
And whats my view distance?
If im trying to pirate, im probably not one ship trying to 1v1 another ship. Im probaby 5 vessels. Spread out to look for targets. If the 5 of us can spread out over 10km. And manage decent veiw distance. Then we have the entire span of the international waters to try and catchup to the first boat stalling the target...
And again, if every battle starts with the target returning fire, than them being auto flagged or not is meaningless.
You would be very surprised, anything you think might happen is flipped over when it comes to peoples pvp and creativity.
There have been a lot of points people have gone over, one of which is id expect boats to deal damage to players, you simply have a lower lvl player and you have their aoe kill them so you can freely destroy their boat while they are red.
You can use decoy boats as well to try to bait people, once they are corrupted they can no go back to town as they would be KOS d to being corrupted and unable to drop their loot off until they work off the corruption. Plenty of time to kill them on the open sea and have a fast scout boat to keep track of people.
Eventually people would start to realize if it is worth fighting over rather then simply and safely getting their loot and driving back in most cases leading to less pvp on the ocean and people trying to make most out of the lucrative treasure finding, etc.
I mean. I support pvp. Im not afraid of the entire world being open world pvp. I just question the shift, because its unnecessary.
Ive played sea of theives. If you end up in my view distance, you are now my target number 1. Im going to sink you.
In ashes ill probably be the same at times. Ill be out at sea, and if i see you, and im bored... hello content. The auto flagging doesnt need to be involved at all for me to do that.
But this doesnt explain the difference, and the need for the transitional area...
Why is naval combat with the curruption system in place okay in costal waters, but not good enough in international waters?
But for some people, the penalties for Corruption would have been enough to make it so that they don't just treat every ship they see as content.
If this wasn't true, then we're back to 'Corruption doesn't technically work'. But this might also be an incorrect perception based on what 'work' means.
I would have assumed Corruption must be powerful enough that Aggressive Players do not immediately view all Passive Players as content/potential rewards. It would then have to be the same on the ocean.
I don't assume that anymore, basically. If Corruption isn't even intended to be powerful enough that I don't view Passive Players as people I should leave alone, there's no point in having it in the open sea at all, it would just encourage those players to go out there expecting to be protected by the system and then not, because the player groups out there are different.
This could even be practically a signal to those players 'Hey this is the actual PvP area, you may want to stay out of it'.
Thats the thing tho. Curruption can still have the same function. If i attack you at sea, and you dont return fire... knowing you are on a ship you will have to rebuild, i can assume you may not be worth sinking. So maybe i leave you be after my first attack. Not returning fire would be an action you could take, to make me think if its worth it to fight you...
And my point is that I think Steven does NOT want that.
I think Steven doesn't even want that on LAND.
Which is why the Corruption system is so much more functionally lenient than it could be and will require testing. But I've been thinking all this time that 'requires testing' meant 'how can I tweak this so that it makes people not want to go Red on a whim', when there's no basis for that. It could easily mean 'testing to see if they can remove it entirely', or 'testing to see which zones they can remove it from', or even 'testing to see what level of being ganked is the precise amount required for players to not leave or complain and start fighting back instead'.
Ashes needs losers.
I see what you are saying here.
But this removes a "layer" to the pvp. The bluffing layer.
Sneaking though a treasure ship just because it was unguarded, is like rolling a nat 20 on disguise.
Do i do anything other than get lucky? No. But thats still pretty awesome.
Ah, but does Steven like that layer?
Is it necessary to Ashes' design?
Even though I like the auto-flagging in the open sea, I agree that the reasoning behind the change is not clear, especially as described in the stream.
A potential reason might be the difficulty of implementing corruption in ship battles, but with the information we have at the moment, this seems like an invalid argument.. for now!
What I mean by that is, as you said, since in coastal waters the corruption will be active as it was stated during the last stream, and with the assumption that there will be ship battles there, then yes, 'difficulty of implementation' might seem invalid.
But, if Intrepid in the next few months comes out and says something like 'In coastal waters, corruption will be active for player battles, but there will be no ship battles', then the 'difficulty of implementation' could actually be a valid reason for the change.
We simply don't have enough information atm.. Hopefully they will elaborate a bit more in the future about the reasoning behind this.
Idk. But my veiw is still that the auto flagging is unnecessary. If curruption is harsh enough that killing greens is nearly impossible, then the incentives to fight back need to be raised to the point that people always tend to fight back.
If curruption is so lenient that everyone kills greens anyway, then no one will stay green.... and will always fight back........ again, makes auto flagging pointless.
Not entirely. This is the situation where it explicitly matters.
"If you are Green and have no chance, you might as well not fight."
On Land, this will prevent your opponent from maybe REPEATEDLY killing you AFTER the first time. Like, if I kill a player because I think they have loot today, and they don't fight back and die REALLY easily, I can just extort them the next day, or choose to help them, or any number of things. I probably got a lot of corruption too, so I don't want to kill them again if they're just in my space.
Difference is at sea, if I sink their ship, they're not necessarily coming back. And whatever they were out there for is gone, it's not just 'regular existence near my Node', for example. So Corruption isn't necessary. I wasn't going to kill them again anyway.
Corruption itself would still serve the purpose of 'protecting someone who just wants to exist from being killed daily because they're just a Mob that spawns with Loot, to me', without making them unable to play the game in my vicinity.
At sea, the INTENTION could be that 'weaker players are unable to play the game in my vicinity'. Even at Sea, why shoot back if you know you're so much more likely to lose? On Land you 'don't fight back' because you 'have no choice, you're just existing playing the game at all'. At Sea, the answer is 'don't go out there'.
That's why I would also expect to see more Corruption-free zones or situations popping up. Anything a player 'could reasonably avoid' could also 'just not have Corruption anymore'.
I agree with the aspect, the curruption system isnt needed at sea, because if i kill someone they wont necessarily come back and get greifed.
But again, if any and all players on a ship did not fall under the curruption system, i would understand the change. I dont understand it as is, where naval combat in costal waters uses the system and international waters do not.
With more info about the reasons for the change, im sure it can and will be completely reasonable. With the info we currently have, i can not support the change.
The only reason I don't agree with you fully is that Coastal Waters actually ARE 'a place where a player might be just existing', and therefore the 'You can still play the game in the vicinity of stronger players' should still apply. Peaceful or less-leveled players who want to just be fishers or divers or such on a coastline.
It's easy to make the distinction between this and Open Seas, in my mind. So:
"Strong ship/crew in an area where weaker players are supposed to feel like they get to play the game is subject to Corruption."
"Strong ship/crew in an area where weaker players are not considered in the same way are not subject to Corruption."
I feel it comes down to this the land is going to be more focused on wars between guilds and nodes to reduce people flagging against each other as much and allow people to enjoy content without the constant threat of pvp.
For the sea this is much different as they are going for more a constant threat at all times pushing it to be a bit more competitive form the pvx side of things between getting treasure, etc and battles with players. Simply they want to create a cool fun design idea around it and I'm for that.
Not everything needs to be the same, in fact there are battlegrounds that will be on the main land that is automatically flagged as well. The sense of threat when you go into open waters is something you will feel instantly and it adds layers to the experience and fun of the game.
At the end of the day they expanded the waters and it is simply what they want to do, they will test it and see how it works out and adjust as they see fit.
The reason why i dont share your point of view in this example is because, i expect strong players in the strong player area to already be fighting back... which makes removing the curruption system pointless because no one can become currupt when all parties join in on the fight.
Ah, but it DOES tell the 'weaker' players very pointedly:
"You are not tall enough to ride, and we are not giving you any leverage over the strong, here."
Like everyone talks how, curruption may be too much of a punishment, or it may hardly do anything letting you kill greens 5 times a day....
In the end, the real punishment of the curruption system is that greens can attack you without flagging. Its the social pressure of, am i willing to fight everyone? Thats the true down side.
As people play ashes, and experience ashes, and become more involved in ashes. I doubt those playing the game need a "im not tall enough" warning... play the game. F around and find out. Its part of the experience.
I don't agree with this.
Only reason people have an issue with greens attacking without being flagging is they can't defend themselves without gaining more corruption, which leads to a higher penalty.
Did you think this was a pve game?
It's incredible and I absolutely love it. There will be natual tension and an organic reason for PVP. Fighting over resources
You don't feel there should be any systems or places in the game for PvP content? Seems short sighted to me.