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
-From this perspective, your goal is to find the most plump target. That is, the one with the most materials to drop and of the materials the most rare and also a target you know or believe you can take down. Of course as a combatant your not going to know what they have to drop, but you can do some reasoning based on the area they are gathering in, their gear, who they are with and behaviors etc. The risk obviously would be, is the target worth attacking for a reward I believe they have? (if your actually evaluating and not just killing to do so).
I feel like this portion of the gameplay is fine. I don't think Combatants should get any extra help here.
Gatherer:
On the other hand, I do think that some forgiveness to a gatherer should be warranted.
I do not think that gatherers should be overly protected though.
If I'm a gatherer and spent 2-3 hours getting rare materials. It could be extremely frustrating to loose everything. That in mind, I would be good with the gatherer having at least some means to mitigate losses. As a gatherer, you are taking a larger risk than a combatant. Its likely why you are a target to begin with. You have spent time and effort out in the world that isn't to be minimalized and something like that could make people just log off. Especially if your gameplay is to just do profession type stuff and your not doing other gameplay loops. I know if was personally doing some gathering, I would like to prepare a little bit before I go out so that I can mitigate some losses if I die.
Here are maybe some ideas.
-A combatant with each kill begins to loose a certain parentage of loot that drops from the target, like -3% each kill or something like that and stacks to a certain point (12%) for a certain amount of time. (though I'd prefer the next idea over this one)
-A gatherer who has been recently killed only looses a certain percentage of loot. Again maybe only -3% each time they die. Maybe this stacks up to a certain point (12%) for a certain amount of time if you just get this crazy run of bad luck and are killed over and over (not necessarily by the same player)
-A gatherer has a magical bag that is very, very limited but can store materials gathered in here that are safe from being looted. This bag would have to be crafted by a profession and maybe only has 1 charge to it and over time the bag will degrade and break. This way it provides another game loop for crafters to remake these bags and the magical charges to go with it. It should be semi difficult to get these.
-Maybe you can pray to your god and get a loot drop buff.
-Maybe there are potions or other items that can modify how much loot is dropped. Again, this should be somewhat difficult to get.
-There could be an ability that you would need to spec in, that can give them a loot drop buff percentage.
One thing though, this shouldn't become a chore to prep to go out and gather. Not sure how that could be balanced, but again just some thoughts.
Oh and I really would like to see gathering similar to New World where you can cut down any tree you see, almost any rocks and plants everywhere... the gathering in that game was so satisfying the way it works along with their sound effects. Please make AoC so that I can just go start grabbing up stuff. Feels really good this way.
And here are the risks/punishments for becoming corrupted, since most here seem to think it is merely a slap on the wrist.
-Corruption penalties occur as the corruption is gained.[11] The higher the corruption score:
The more skill and stat dampening applies (lower health and mana, lower gear proficiency), until the corrupt player ultimately becomes ineffective at combat.[2][12][13] This dampening only affects PvP combat.[14]
-A corrupt (red player) suffers penalties at four times[7] the rate of a non-combatant, and has a chance to drop any carried/equipped items based on their current corruption score. This includes:[7][13]
Dropping weapons and gear.[7][16]
Any amount of corruption allows a player to drop equipped gear upon death. The higher the corruption the greater the chances.[72] – Steven Sharif
These dropped items may be looted by other players.[73]
-Corrupt players respawn at random locations in the vicinity of their death, not at regular spawn points.[74]
Non-corrupt players always respawn at the closest active respawn point (to their death).[75]
-Corruption penalties occur as the corruption is gained (not just at death).[11]
-Corrupted players can be attacked regardless of other affiliations. This is something that will be tested during Alpha-2.[17]
-If a non-combatant attacks a corrupt player, the non-combatant will not flag as a combatant.[18]
-Non-combatants who heal, buff, or otherwise assist combatants or corrupted players will be flagged as combatants.[19][20]
-A corrupt player’s location is revealed to bounty hunters on their world map.[7][4]
-Player to player trading and the ability to store items in public warehouses is disabled for corrupt players.[23
-Corruption has a visible effect on a player’s appearance.[27]
-NPC guards will kill corrupted players on sight.[44]
-Experience debt will scale to approximately 2 or 3 percent of the total XP for a max level player. These numbers are subject to change based on testing.[77]
-There is a 60 second timer to logout while corrupt.[56]
Do you still believe that corruption isn't harsh enough to provide the proper amount of risk for killing a gatherer?
My big concern would be that there would be some way to exploit the corruption away, for example by using an alt to kill your corrupted player until the corruption is gone. I know there is an xp debt associated with that, but will max level players care?
Archeage had the interesting sounding idea of putting toxic players in jail for their crimes after a trial with player jurors, but on the fresh start servers I've played on in the past few years, all they have to do is glitch their way out of jail and get a new trial over and over until a more sympathetic jury let's them go. If players in AoC can find a similar method of avoiding the penalties from corruption, the system will be a failure.
Ashes of creation strives to bring back those old days where the mmo genre had a social aspect in it, people actually played together, they needed to play together and that did all the difference.. together is better.
In my opinion you should incentivize warriors to protect and escort gatherers while they are gathering, by somehow benefiting from it.. this way gatherers can feel a bit more safe and it will also give more social meaning to the game. Its a win win situation.
Well crafted boxes will be harder to pick.
Then it will be a decision by the player if they want the trade off by taking the time to picking the lock and reap the reward.
But then risk that the player they killed will respawn and get back to the area to protect their loot.
I think to help mitigate this type of toxic game play with regard to these types of people ganking gatherers you could lessen the drop rate from the gatherers they kill by a percentage for every level they are above the player they just ganked, and, in addition, for every number of players exceeding the number of gatherers present. For example, if one player was gathering, and he or she is jumped by a gang of four players near the same level (let's say there is +5 level buffer/no penalty zone), then the rate of the goods dropped would decrease by 3x of whatever percentage you set as the penalty. If there were 2 gatherers present, then the drop penalty would reduce to 2x, and so on. For one vs. one, no penalty. Now, say these four losers were ten levels above the gatherer(s) they are ripping off. Then, the amount of materials dropped by the gatherer would be reduced by the 3x penalty multiplier for the excessive players plus a 5x over-level penalty per player (10 levels over less the +5 levels over no penalty buffer = 5 levels of charged penalty).
With this type of system, the risk is still there for a gatherer who is legitimately engaged by another single player of at or near (within +5 levels) the same level. However, the toxic high level or multiplayer ganking becomes less profitable, especially coupled with the corruption system. That's my 2 cents.
And also, there's a whole lot of discussion that paints gatherers as walking lootboxes that are incapable of sending an attacking idiot to goddess in a closed casket.
It's not EVE or FFXIV, you guys – gathering gear will be in separate slots.
Hired mercenary is ok. Attackers can hire too. But those should be less skilled compared to the city guards.
How about artisan gatherer's have access to (from player crafting, purchasing from high level NPCs, or questing for) a magical container of sorts, that holds their gathered materials and requires additional effort on behalf of the person who killed them, to open and collect a limited amount of the contents?
Something that I think would be cool for mitigating the attacks of other players would be the ability of gatherers to hire a bodyguard or possibly bodyguards depending on the dangers in the area. Having other players who can accept a quest and protect you sounds like a fun in world scenario. There could also be skills of invisibility when gathering and protective shields that you can maintain while running away. I like crafting but have stayed away from it a lot because it's so separated from the main story and other aspects of gameplay. If gathering became a social event with other players and the danger of being attacked it would be a lot more thrilling and interesting to play. Getting ganked can be super annoying but with the corruption system and some of the ideas I have read and am suggesting I would be a lot less pissed when it happens if I felt I truly was able to fight back or had the possibility of an escape route.
- Implementing some sort of system or social support to allow solo gatherers to recruit body guards without needing to be part of a formal guild or alliance. There are a ton of possibilities, but anything a bit more streamlined than spamming chat would be great.
- Gathering bags with lower percent drop than normal loot. This option could potentially scale with higher gatherers having access to more secure bags.
- A lock box item for storing high value items with a timer to unlock. The idea here is that a gatherer could put rare drops into a lock box that would drop on death. However, the ganker would need a specified time out of combat to pick the lock. I think this could be a great addition to the risk/reward structure because thieves would need to return to safety to lock pick loot, and it could provide interesting dynamics around really valuable loot such as raid materials.
Like I said, not sure if any of these are fun, but they would be options I would like as a player who gathers more than he ganks.
It is called the Pareto Principle or the 80/20 rule.
According to it, both the PvP-er and the Gatherer have to win the conflict 80% of time to be happy and to not leave the game.
But if that cannot be solved, the fallback solution would be that both the PvP-er and the Gatherer must get/keep 80% of the resources, so that they are both happy. (the gatherer will have his reputation tarnished a bit though)
Anyway, Steven has to generate some resources for both the winner and the loser.
Why Steven? Because he came up with the idea of having a large map, no teleportation to town, scarce resources, owPvP and with a demanding mastery... for gathering too.
Of course whoever will spend a significant time gathering, will have less time training in PvP, unless volunteers come to the gathering spot to "offer" this training, so that gatherers can be useful during sieges too.
Will players abuse this? Of course they'll do that. So what will Steven do? Change the rules?
If TTK is not too short it will create good engaging moments for both parties.
The current system that we know of on how drops and corruption work depending on the player state (green,purple,red) seems to benefit the gatherer in most scenarios. If there will be anything in place to discourage outnumberd fights it would be great as well. (Supposedly the plan is for the gathering to be something mostly done solo)
No one has fun losing their stuff. People don't want to risk everything they want to feel like they are risking everything. You have fun killing people and getting a bunch of stuff.
Perhaps if you die and lose raw materials you get a buff that increases the amount of resources you gather by 100% for an hour. This will cyclically encourage more and more people to farm while they can and then do more and more caravans. Making the loss seem less relevant.
Losing processed materials is fine too if they aren't hard to replace. If all I need to do is go to a forge to smelt copper i don't care if i lose copper bars. If i need to do 6 raids, 9 battle grounds, farm specs of ore for 6 months then walk at -99% movement speed for 50 km to make 1 bar of mithril and I can lose that bar of mithril because I died a single time. That's a quit, uninstall, and go to every forum i can possibly find and ruin the reputation of the game.
You NEED some sort of comeback mechanic or people simply wont play.
Soloable gathering and Caravan gathering
Soloable gathering of certain resources should limit the size/quantity of the resource you can gather, greatly, just due to the nature of what is being gathered.
Caravan gathering for mining...your mayor(traders guild/whatever) would decide to set up a mine where large deposits are located. Caravans are a must for transportation, and will be used by all players mining in the mine until the Caravan is full....your mayor(traders guild/whatever) could decide to send multiple caravans to load before returning to the node. You may choose to either select soloable or group harvest when mining in a mine. Group harvest produces a larger portion of the resource and can only be picked up if a Caravan is nearby. When the caravan returns to the node, you are given the portion of resources you harvested, in the local storage. You may use the stored ore for node progression, or for personal use...larger pieces may be broken down into smaller quantities.....metals can be combined into larger pieces using small pieces, if a large enough forge is present in the node. The differences in what players can hold in terms of ore should be significant compared to that of caravans.
Stone quarry - soloable vs caravan gathering....same deal...mayor(or traders guild/whatever) sets up a quarry...different sizes of stone should be required for different things....larger sizes only being able to be moved using a caravan. You cannot combine smaller stones into a larger stones, but larger stones can be broken down into smaller pieces. Large pieces required for foundations and certain building construction. Harvest time for larger pieces takes time.
Resource piles - if a Caravan is not yet nearby, a pile of resources should be displayed near where the harvesting is occurring, awaiting to be loaded into the Caravan.
Same principle applied to Lumber Mills and Lumber Yards.... and any resource that weighs a lot in reality...
Caravan hijacking is a must - if certain items require caravans to transport, then in order to steal those resources, you would need to hijack the caravan and drive it away yourself.
How does this prevent resource loss and encourage pvp? Players will be forced to use a common Caravan in these instances, encouraged to protect its goods. As most of these items that use a caravan to ship are unable to be transported without a caravan, then the resources aren't lost as easily unless the caravan is successfully stolen. Especially if harvesting occurs in groups. This encourages group interactions.
Players harvesting from another nodal point they do not belong to should first require permission to do so, with most of what they harvest being taxed(set by mayor), else be flagged as a combatant, and taking faction penalties with that node.
The usual smaller nodes are scattered around for soloable harvest.
I would expect herbalists and alchemists, fishers, to be more solo types.
To increase the chance of revenge, when the player gets corrupted, should pass some essence in a material form to the killed gatherer. That essence could be a resource too, which artisans may use to craft enhanced invisibility buffs usable by bounty-hunters against that particular character. Preferably those should work only when that character is in corrupted state.
This would ensure that a player who becomes frequently corrupted to eventually be defeated.
The enhanced invisibility potion should render the character completely invisible against that specific corrupted player and maybe be dispelled only after the 2nd attack.
Everyone in the radius should get the message except the combatants just so they never know whether or not they were reported. If non-combatants never feel safe, so to shouldn't combatants.
Other than that I don't really think they should get any 'automatic' protection at all. An idea I was thinking about is - similar to hire protection for your caravan - you should be able to hire a player (or NPC) to protect you while gathering, especially when it comes to gathering for rare items in very busy spots.
Without violence there is opression, the players who are just like drone ants will unbalance the game by hoarding more resources than anyone.
Gathering without the possibility of losing everything you have is the same as cheating.
- stay aware of your surroundings
- get a feel for player habits / routines and note wayward players
- explore the land and gather where there a less players
- gather with a friend and both look out for each other
- gather in a group
- join a guild (if you want their protection and they are not willing to look after you, change guilds)
- guild getting picked on (make an alliance)
- don`t want to be at war with a guild (try some diplomacy)
Poe’s law is going strong today
And in turn, gatherers could have their own guards following them. They might want to spread out to get as much as they can, as quickly as they can... Or they might want to stay close fore safety reasons and take things slowly... Which might end up giving PvPers more time to prep.
Just some thoughts I had.
You an EVE player too? I am!
AoC caught my eye, but it appears that this game is too carebear friendly, its full of whiners in this community who believe that ganking all farmers is griefing! It is not!
Griefing is letting them farm the gold non stop and finnance their war efforts unchallenged!!
That's why we need to stay vocal on here and not let them change the system. This game clearly won't be as brutal as Eve, Ark, or Rust.
But if we can at least take some farmed material and stop players from "free farming" with no risk will actually have a proper game economy *cough New World cough*.