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
@akabear isnt the same thing that happens on land? You die, you get respawned at the next respawn point (node?). Just that its like 3-5 minutes distance on land and like 10 minute distance on water.
Not really different at all. Taking Death Penalties in order to save 10 minutes of travel time seems beyond stupid to me.
There are now areas in the open world that do not have the compromise of the Corruption mechanic.
Doesn't matter how large the world is.
And... yes. I will not play what I don't like.
That's OK.
so, the open sea is going to be a shitzone. Full Pvp are often for a-holes. People that likes to corpse camp others, so they have no option but to log off. If they really liked Pvp, why not do arenas or battlegrounds. Because they proberly aren't that good at pvp. They need all the advangates they can get. Being higher level. Being more people. Attacking someone in the back. Attacking them while the opponent is fighting a mob. etc
What a sore loser.
That comment makes no sence at all. But i get what type of person you are now. You are only happy when you can ruin things for other. Those who can't create, destroy
Allows them to make deep sea fishing more profitable due to added inherit risk. here the thing though what do u risk traveling across the sea to the other continent if your taking resources then your basicly a caravan if your travelling to get to other continent dont carry any resources then u got no risk either sooo i dont see an issue.
Also adds makes boss encounter in the ocean much more interesting like archages kraken kills and so on had to keep an eye out for enemy vessels too.
pretty certain your right here. I bet you resources on the islands will be different from eachother or there be unique resources on each island for example the better plank of wood might need wood that is unique to each continent in its combination so taking said wood across the islands could be rather profitable
Having spent years in Archeage, I know firsthand what happens out on the open seas. It can be super exciting, but in the blink of an eye it can easily devolve into an mass of toxicity and unchecked griefing. How this pans out will largely depend on how its balanced from a design point of view, in addition to how the community rallies around this. So I'm looking forward to how this will look in Alpha 2 play testing.
Balance = How many harbors are there? If there are only a couple harbors across the world like Archeage, that probably won't cut it. How hard is it to build/upgrade ships? How widespread are the really good fishing spots/hot spots for quests/etc? Hopefully more than just a few, or ideally they're dynamic. What's the ship to ship combat really going to be like?
Community = How will a server treat unfettered douchebaggery? Will they be able to transfer/name change and can people run away from their reputation? What's the servers appetite weeding out people that bully lower level/lower skill players?
I'm still skeptical. But there are too many variables for me to have a real opinion.
But in an open world pvp game, you already run the risk of loosing stuff to getting attacked and killed.
At least the corruption mechanic creates a give and take element and gives the player an option in a fight.
I now consider it to be an open world PvP-centric game. Which is why I won't be playing it.
I don't really care about losing a portion of resources. I'm also not particulary concerned about losing the PvP battle.
I don't want to participate in a PvP battle when I'm not in the mood...and would prefer to be doing something else, like exploring and gathering. Which includes exploring the Open Sea and its unique NPCs.
I am curious if naval caravans will be like land ones where you teleport out randomly when it launches to prevent people from waiting by harbors to gank.
Just move on man. I've seen you complaining many many times in this forums. This game is not for you.
PvE players just gotta complain till somone changes the game to PvE just for them :P new world tried this and we all know how well that went :P haha
I personally don't mind the change because it won't affect my gameplay style, I used to be a resident of the Wildy in RS and Rust is currently my main game, however I'm also skeptical and cannot stay quiet when I see something that doesn't make sense to me or that feels like it contradicts what was said in the past. And I'm not sure a big change like this is simple enough to test and to just toggle on and off during Alpha 2.
If naval gameplay in Ashes works similar to Sea of Thieves', which I hope it will because that game can be quite fun, when all members of a crew die the winning crew will more often than not sunk the other ship, for any number of reasons. So unlike open world PvP in land, you probably won't be able to go back to the fight in the open sea and get revenge because you don't have a ship in your inventory and swimming/aquatic mount is probably not going to get you (and your group) back there quick enough.
For the reason above (and probably other reasons too), in my opinion, even with corruption the open sea would already be one of the most dangerous places PvP wise, which is the reason why I fail to understand their decision from a game design perspective.
This change might turn out to be extremely fun, a great addition to the game and the majority of the community might love it, but I genuinely still can't see a logical explanation to do it, especially because this change somewhat contradicts quotes like these:
TL;DR: the more I think about it, the more it feels like Intrepid is just catering to those who enjoy this style of gameplay and/or the corruption system is bad, which I don't think it is. If they want to say risk vs. reward was the reason for this change, then why aren't open world dungeons, land world bosses and other high tier/rewarding land content also free PvP/corruptionless?
That's what I said.
Not only would it be extremely difficult to retrieve most of your loot on death in the ocean even before this change, but like...
Bounty hunters aren't going to just swim on up to your pirate ship and attack all your reds. In any zone with a barrier to entry like a boat or aquatic mount there is going to be less bounty hunting. The open ocean was inherently going to have pirates and it was going to be much easier for reds to live in.
On top of that, you have IS leaning more towards having mobs in the open ocean before this announcement... So a low bounty hunter zone with mobs you can use to wash your corruption off of? The old model was already going to be pretty risky. It just required that red pirates did some like, you know, work and planning to reduce their risk.
So I kind of wish Steven explained what the risk calculation he and the team was basing this on. Because even if the loot is 'too good', I'm not understanding the justification for this change and I've played the section over and over just to make sure I didn't miss something.
Why is this an unexpected move to me? There were more ways to increase risk from a PvP perspective and a PvE perspective without making this change. Mob density, encounter design, and even geographical layout (which in my opinion they absolutely just did along with this change but that's speculation.) Flagging everyone is a pretty blunt instrument. There are a couple reasons I could guess as to why they wanted to do this specific move, but I'd rather just wait for Steven to actually explain it.
Until then I'll remain surprised at 'QoL buff for red pirates' since it'd be very hard to guess that's a QoL buff Steven was willing to make up until now. I just hope Dygz isn't a sign of something deeper given Ashes is a game that needs as large of a population to work.
Now I will use that same low level, expendable alt for my exploration of the seas and thus preserving my main.
There are a ton of risks for auto flagging in regards to abuse from other players. Right now it doesn't matter how powerful your guild is, if you constantly corrupt your players to bully a guild you are risking a lot of gear and time, however adding auto PVP flagging on the sea means that abuse of sea transportation may be the best option for any guild.
The worst part about any of this in my head is that with this system in place the most logical solution is to abuse the naval content in ashes. It does not seem like all naval content will be avoidable and there is no/less punishment if you control the waters, you remove/mitigate the risk for your guild, and while doing so open up endless opportunity that has been stated will be better than land based opportunity.
Rare resources will likely be on those islands requiring players to get there. In this current system a guild or alliance may be able to have a massive impact through naval control effectively giving them more profits than any land based operation. This could create a system where there is no real reason to farm land objectives and guilds/alliances can exist almost solely out on the sea. Also this provides a huge opportunity for guilds to gatekeep content easier than ever before.
We have been told ships will be difficult to build and upgrade and assuming that is true, the barrier to entry combined with a more skilled player already achieving the upgraded ship will provide almost no avenue for a player to stand against those that stop them from traveling across the sea/ocean.
If everyone flags for PVP on the sea and valuable resources from npc's reside on/in the sea then a seafaring guild can farm both players and npc's for the gold/resources they need to buy the gear they need. Furthermore gatekeeping rare resources that would be exclusive to that island provides an additional revenue stream. Why would a guild not do this? You basically prove your PVP prowess, earn what on paper seems like an infinite revenue stream that is provided both by NPCs and players AND you remove the highest risk portion of the server as risk.
Example:
Alliance 1 controls most of the naval content. Alliance 2 is a patron of a metro and monarch of a castle.
Alliance 1 - They make money by raiding players, they make money by raiding NPC's, they make money by gatekeeping island ports where valuable resources are held effectively controlling the supply which == Infinite money stream
Alliance 2 - Has an infinite money sink in defending each of the 3 castle vassal nodes getting monthly sieges.
The metro will likely provide a number of benefits and be much more balanced in terms of give and take but will require significant time to gather needed resources and generate the needed gold.
Alliance 1 has 2 cost, building ships, and manning those ships, alliance 2 has to manage the castle, manage their metro, has massive resource sinks, significant political struggles. There are so many issues alliance 2 needs to deal with. But alliance 1 doesn't need a metro to reside in, only 1 they can launch from and I doubt a mayor can make hundreds of players enemy of the state and even if they can there are options for said guild.
Players will need to cross the ocean for content/raids/bosses/loot. If alliance 1 establishes control over naval content then they can easily have a rotating roster of players on ships looting npcs in there free time and PVPing players when they see them. Even if 1 ship loses to an enemy guild the travel time for ships on water will be less than on land and the likelihood that they can have a 2nd ship arrive is likely ESPECIALLY if like IS said ports are the only location you can launch a ship from.
Build a tank ship? They send a fast ship as interception and whatever the counter to the tank ship
Build a fast ship? Players are already bottlenecked to launch from node ports, where are you going to escape to?
Build a fleet and have a coordinated launch for your entire guild or alliance? Do you need to do this every time just to merely cross? Even if you win and temporarily clear the other naval guild as soon as they can they will just do everything in their power to prevent you from ever moving across the ocean again.
Even if the guild with primary naval content control occasionally gets whiped most of the time they will be abusing the average player and reaping the rewards of better than average loot, and can relaunch and patrol the naval content again.
Yes on some servers guilds will duke it out on the open seas... but as soon as there is a victor there will be too much power in the hands of that guild or alliance, the opportunity for that power doesn't lie anywhere else in the game. Its an unbalanced change.
The last problem I think of off the top of my head is the likelihood that this guild is actually a nice guild. A nice guild that ferries players across for a fee providing safe travel. Destroying those they deem as bullies, the nice guild controls the flow of resources from those islands because they control the flow of players, IE their players always get there first. They come across as the good guys helping everyone out but they make insane money by doing so, mitigate their own risk and reap more rewards, again not in like with proper risk vs reward.
"Um. I said I would not be playing.
I did not say I would not be testing."
Also @Dygz my confusion was that I considered testing the Alpha to be playing, I understand what you are saying now.
TL:DR
The potential power imbalance is the problem. I can decrease risk by controlling naval content and I can reap better than average rewards in doing so. It is not in line with Ashes goals.
Ok
But that's certain areas, not the whole ocean.
I recently played RUST which is an amazing sandbox game and now with some amazing graphics as well, but I have a hard time playing it when all players focus on is gunning each other down. There is SO MUCH in that game, but doing any of it is almost pointless when you are constantly getting gunned down.
From a Lore perspective, @StevenSharif tell me why corruption stops working in the deep waters vs land.
Back when I first got into MMOs I almost stopped because in Ultima Online the game turned into this: Mine/Log (lose that material and time by getting pvped), or if I made it to the point that I can get the ore to a master smith and get some armor and a sword... step out of a town and get PVPed... go mine/log (repeat)
Losing some materials is one thing... it is the time lost that is the other even greater loss. What is the "risk" of the attackers in deep water, what is their "time-sink" investment? They can only lose a ship? Being a pirate should not be easy. Real pirates had to hide and avoid "civilized" places. As it was stated in the Dev Stream, it seems that the attacker is in a win/nothing to lose situation. If that is untrue, then that needs to be better explained.
I am torn and leaning to avoiding boating if I can.
Don't be red then
Well, apparently it is the whole ocean. God has spoken.