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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.
CORRUPTION OPPRESSING THE WORLD; Essence Conduits; UE5 Features
Sapiverenus
Member
As stated by Sharif and found on the wiki, players are conduits of some Essence stuff from a higher plane.
And there are Corrupted that are some kind of messed up beings that are also conduits of Essence.
https://youtu.be/VntEoWPU-1o?t=900
So why not have the world be a Battle of Worlds?
The more goodie goodie players in a location, the more 'positive' influence on the area. Since players are kind of weak beings compared to corrupted it's not too dramatic; which I like.
The more Corrupted in an area, the darker and more terrible a place it is; and apparently there are all kinds of ESSENCE and the Corrupted are also Conduits of it. . . so there's room for Diablo Flesh Horror Butcher dungeons, Necropolis', Dark Blackened Lands, Infernal, Evil Glowie Poison Mushroom Nature, Sea Evils, all kinds of danger.
Imagine an area with blackened ground; Corrupted grass like a black matte of stiff blade-like fur. Spanning the horizon is darkness wide and high, slow roiling grey black clouds that never disperse and expand their reach wider and wider the higher they go.
Mist and haze obstruct your view of the grounds below, they reach far beyond the clouds; but when direclty under the clouds past the broad veil you clearly see that they hide a dark vortex swirling within them, swirling high into a deep pitch black above.
Just make shit like that part of the world and hurricane like dark clouds swirl where evil shit's grown to mega raid tier. Constant Corruption players have to fight all over;
IT can't be contained and there must be constant raiding or GAME OVER when everyone dies and the world is taken over
The corruption should constantly be growing and an ever present threat to All. It should be raiding. It should be able to WIN. GAME OVER.
And if power scale from level 1 - 100 is not too dramatic and level 10s are quite useful, then having your character get DELETED is not too dramatic.
If gear is dropped on death as standard and is mostly crafted then all this "protect the trade", "build up Nodes" stuff is meaningful and creates tension between the world and players.
If you have to whittle away at local problems to reduce their ability to destroy nodes and take over everything while also not provoking a counter-attack [waiting for reinforcements] and you don't have Omniscience or stale scripted meaningless stuff. . . . if you NEED to protect the Node or you lose everything because it's a fortress against the deadly world. . . pretty cool, pretty fun.
But player death should be impactful.
Besides dropping gear. So, how about. . . You lose half your progress.
You always retain half of your progress. But you lose half of it on death.
If you die 10, 000 times in a row you can still make progress; you become ROBUST against the loss of progress.
Example:
You gain 10 levels [Level 11]. You die -> You lose 5 levels [Level 6]. You gain 1 more level [Level 7]. You die -> You lose half a level [Level 6.5].
Remember that I want level 10 out of 100 to be useful to a level 100 ( or Level 6 out of 60, whatever ). Power shouldn't scale to x100; it should be more like starting at level 20 and reaching Level 100 [5x power gain]. Plate armor should work for anyone with the strength.
Encumberance should be a thing. Literal bags with literal bag space be a thing. 1 man carts. Mules. Most of these are intended but it shouldn't be gamified in a small gamified world; just give things impact and relevance.
And there are Corrupted that are some kind of messed up beings that are also conduits of Essence.
https://youtu.be/VntEoWPU-1o?t=900So why not have the world be a Battle of Worlds?
The more goodie goodie players in a location, the more 'positive' influence on the area. Since players are kind of weak beings compared to corrupted it's not too dramatic; which I like.
The more Corrupted in an area, the darker and more terrible a place it is; and apparently there are all kinds of ESSENCE and the Corrupted are also Conduits of it. . . so there's room for Diablo Flesh Horror Butcher dungeons, Necropolis', Dark Blackened Lands, Infernal, Evil Glowie Poison Mushroom Nature, Sea Evils, all kinds of danger.
Imagine an area with blackened ground; Corrupted grass like a black matte of stiff blade-like fur. Spanning the horizon is darkness wide and high, slow roiling grey black clouds that never disperse and expand their reach wider and wider the higher they go.
Mist and haze obstruct your view of the grounds below, they reach far beyond the clouds; but when direclty under the clouds past the broad veil you clearly see that they hide a dark vortex swirling within them, swirling high into a deep pitch black above.
Just make shit like that part of the world and hurricane like dark clouds swirl where evil shit's grown to mega raid tier. Constant Corruption players have to fight all over;
If any one area is left alone it should scale quickly to 200+. . . 500+. . .. 1000+. . .
.IT can't be contained and there must be constant raiding or GAME OVER when everyone dies and the world is taken over
The corruption should constantly be growing and an ever present threat to All. It should be raiding. It should be able to WIN. GAME OVER.
And if power scale from level 1 - 100 is not too dramatic and level 10s are quite useful, then having your character get DELETED is not too dramatic.
If gear is dropped on death as standard and is mostly crafted then all this "protect the trade", "build up Nodes" stuff is meaningful and creates tension between the world and players.
If you have to whittle away at local problems to reduce their ability to destroy nodes and take over everything while also not provoking a counter-attack [waiting for reinforcements] and you don't have Omniscience or stale scripted meaningless stuff. . . . if you NEED to protect the Node or you lose everything because it's a fortress against the deadly world. . . pretty cool, pretty fun.
But player death should be impactful.
Besides dropping gear. So, how about. . . You lose half your progress.
You always retain half of your progress. But you lose half of it on death.
If you die 10, 000 times in a row you can still make progress; you become ROBUST against the loss of progress.
Example:
You gain 10 levels [Level 11]. You die -> You lose 5 levels [Level 6]. You gain 1 more level [Level 7]. You die -> You lose half a level [Level 6.5].
EDIT: And thinking about it, a flat amount of progress should be lost no matter what (half a level? quarter of a level? 1/8 a level?). And with more deaths, the respawn increases up to some cap; starting at 3 minutes going up to 8 minutes or something after 15 deaths.
Remember that I want level 10 out of 100 to be useful to a level 100 ( or Level 6 out of 60, whatever ). Power shouldn't scale to x100; it should be more like starting at level 20 and reaching Level 100 [5x power gain]. Plate armor should work for anyone with the strength.
Encumberance should be a thing. Literal bags with literal bag space be a thing. 1 man carts. Mules. Most of these are intended but it shouldn't be gamified in a small gamified world; just give things impact and relevance.
AT WAR
1
Comments
@Natasha
Every game you can't win is a survival game to you.
Not dying in a dangerous world is survival, yes.
Having to retreat is sometimes best; Preparing and acting under pressure to survive is indeed surviving.
It's a basic component of every game with combat to survive and I'm suggesting a unique depth to it not found in other games.
Neither of you like depth or for aspects of a game to be elaborated upon.
I suspect you and others on the forum are prone to getting lostand confused lol
It only took two (2) contrarian posts for the discussion to spiral downward into insults, @Sapiverenus.
There are plenty of survival games out there that have a message board or forums. You might be way happier there.
Are you saying I'm wrong?
Harbingers that exist on Verra as dungeons are where The Ancients are capable of pushing into the material plane. They can continue to do so under the guise of the effects of corruption as it spreads.[3]
These are sources of NPC events that players need to address before they grow out of hand.[4][2]
Players need to participate in these events to stop the spread of corruption and hold back the intrusion on the material plane.[3]
If players fail to address these corrupted areas, the frequency of NPC events against their node will increase. These can lead to node buildings and services being disabled, increasing the node's vulnerability to node sieges.[5]
It can be a very detrimental thing if corruption is not addressed; and that's the intent of corruption, is to present a challenge to the players that if not addressed it becomes exacerbated and a problem over time.[5] – Steven Sharif
I don't think designing for whack-a-mole will be enough.
If completely squashing an area were very difficult and players were pushed back multiple nodes from these Threats then it would be a more balanced power dynamic.
Players would eventually begin to win given that the more players are concentrated in an area, the more they can fight back.
Everything but the most tedious gameplay seems to be tedious to you.
You really have a limited understanding of that word. An inventory that amounts to an excel sheet is tedious. A 'physical' backpack that interacts with the mmo 'world' as a 'physical' object as well as having the convenience of single-button or point & click function is just gameplay.
Think of an accurate way of saying things ffs
Maybe thinking about this is like a look in the mirror of what tedious shit you put up with. Like someone who is freezing but numb; only feeling pain when they warm up.
I'm not the source lol
I guess the opposite of tedious is trivial? Yet they're pretty similar. Empty mechanics that trivialize a game makes it tedious since the point of playing is diminished.
That would change the balance on the world map.
Theoretically is possible.
In practice, after deciding the current node system as core feature many years ago and selling it to supporters, they would just kill the game concept.
You cannot tell players to focus on inter-node politics and at the same time have half of the world map under corruption control. Or if you try that, nodes close to corruption have a big disadvantage. Like those close to the wall, in the Game of Thrones series. I don't see this as a potential feature even 5 years after release.
But each node to have it's own inside fight is a better balance, to let the better mayors and nodes have an advantage over the others.
You're on the forums for less than a week and you think you know the best direction for a game is to turn an MMORPG into a generic survival game. Sit down kid.
lol. man you make no sense. If you have refugees from one node fleeing into another and nodes needing to reinforce the "war front" through trade it just fits perfectly. It's like real life so what are talking about?
Then you mention Game of Thrones which had a ton of politics between the houses. House of the Wolf helped defend the entire realm and that is what kept them in existence and in some serious high rapport until the threat was thought non-existant by power-hungry and immature individuals in House of the Lion.
There is really no need to fight in a Node without outside pressures. There's no reason to play a game without gameplay and petty squabbles are pretty low of the low. Petty squabbles when there are dangers knocking on doors is much more interesting, and other nodes are pressuring the ones on the front to cut the shit and possibly assassinating them to put someone competent in charge is HELL of a lot more interesting.
Seems like you don't want 'politics' or meaningful 'nodes' at all in fact.
Were you born when you made an account? lmao
Totally. You're going to last a long time on the forums I'm sure. At least with all of the overwhelming disagreement for your posts from the community will keep your ideas from being even considered for ashes. Go play rust dude, you were born for that game.
You might be right.
The wiki say that resources will be scarce.
That could be a reason to fight. But maybe some players will chose to just leave the game if they have no resources. On the other hand, maybe there will not be much fight between nodes. Then again some players will leave and those who like just to farm and craft will remain.
The game has many elements which can be balanced. They can also make the inside corruption to be very dangerous.
In any case, the game will not change this core mechanic now, as it was decided before 2017.
A community that rubs your tummy? Makes you feel safe and at home? No one disagreeing with, echoing eachothers shallow opinions ad infinitum?
Never engaging with anything people say to any degree beyond monologuing your rehearsed opinion and how poorly thought out other's CLEARLY is because of some imagined community that fulfills some percieved need you have?
Jesus dude, breathe. I could hear you slamming the keys on your rainbow keyboard from here when you typed that out. Disagreement and debate is one thing. Raging and getting hostile because someone disagreed with you is another. Ironically that's a pretty good representation of multiplayer survival game players.
No core concept or mechanic would be changed though.
It's still nodes and building up. Leaving no room for genuine threats that can push "civilization" back is not exciting.
There's plenty reason to gear refugees given a Node wants to secure its survival and has the capacity to gear others.
100 KG of ore; 10% Iron; is about half a set of armor. I doubt it will take more than 10 minutes to get that unless there's nothing but tiny bits of iron here and there; I doubt the WoW "infrequent respawning rocks giving '5 ore'" approach will be used though. I've spoken a bit more about this in the Caravan thread.
Refugees can help out elsewhere like a multiplicity of smaller threats.
As it is the world is too much like an Urban landscape; there's no separate Nodes.
It's a conveyor belt MMO. I don't need Sharif to tell me that I know from the time he gave on walking between Nodes.
3.5 minutes from one Node to the other is less time than it takes me to walk down the street lmao.
I had a friend that would walk with his family to the grocery store 25 minutes away every time they went shopping. He walked vigorously everywhere he went lol.
3.5 minutes is nothing and the concept is not living up to any hype.
World needs to be 3x bigger once again and have bigger threats with people furiously struggling to work together and barely eeking through.
And Guild Wars 2 is a dogshit conveyor belt mmo.
All you've done is speak emptily without engaging with the topic except at passing. You lack self-awareness.
I don't play any survival game, and you haven't debated much of anything. You did try your hand at insults though; there's your awareness for you.
I read your posts suggestions and stated my take on what they are.
You stated that every game you cant win is a survival game.
Then you go and say I'm prone to getting lost and confused
Your entire rebuttal to my observation was just lashing out.
You gave a flat binary [good/bad] opinion with an empty meaningless reason.
I made an accusation "Every game you can't win is a survival game to you."
You can't hide your lack of reading comprehension.
I gave my take, and you got mad about it. Easy enough to comprehend.
I don't need to write 10,000 words to say that I think something is a bad idea. If you'd have asked me to expand upon my reasoning I could have. But even if you ask now I won't. Did that in another discussion and you just got more pissy.
You gave your take then empty opinion and told me to "sit down kid".
You didn't respond to the content of that post at all. Basically, you give your low effort rehearsed take then tried to feud with me instead of having a constructive discussion.
Get fuckin' real
I told you to sit down after you insulted me 🤣 you threw a constructive discussion out of the window right after you started insulting people. Which so far seems to be the case for every one of your discussion posts. You're hostile and unreasonable to every person who disagrees with you.
Suggestions like these need to be in the very core of a games design with support systems built around it.
I would play a game, that, at its core is built like you suggest, but i believe that it would be a complete cluster fuck when built into AoC.
^QFT
Of course that means it was successful for a different category of players.
My problem with the corruption being that force which pushes "civilization" back is that it is PvE which cannot be made as varied as a PvP fight. Players will always try different strategies.
Somebody said that the Alpha 2 will come in 2026. If that is the case, any additional content like massive PvE fights over the entire map would push the final release 2-3 years further away.
I agree with this. But that time was measured or calculated without considering terrain, NPCs, players...
I think that was a theoretical best case.
In any case they seem to be aware and just made the map larger. Adding even more water is easy
Was I wrong? Are you prone to getting lost and confused or not.
And no it's not every person. It's only people that want to start feuding and stop responding to the topic at hand.
It's not that deep of a suggestion. All the supporting systems are already there. If you stop protecting the players from the game it's just an exciting game.
Every post I have seen from you has just been terrible... Slating the A1 classes when the combat has been reworked.. saying there's no depth to design and now the best of all you want to de-level people? Characters deleted? Game over? That is not an MMO...
You have to be one of the worst shit posters on the forums.