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 still can be killed while in non PVP just the rewards of mats arent as good or as many then killing someone in PVP mode.
i told you i suck at explaining
Killing and death are not important.
If gathering naked ensures keeping resources while being violated more often... I'll choose keeping the resources.
Everybody will gather naked then.
Have a great day folks!
* Create a BIG island and/or continent in the middle of the map surrounded by water that is PVP active (Something in the lines of WOW's Tol Barad, but at a greater scale with a different scope). Since Open Sea is contested territory (PVP), all goes .... might as well prepare folks to shift the mindset to a full PVP-mode. This way there can be a part in the world that is full PVP driven (Its Nodes, leaders, quests, economy, etc..). It also can provide more PVP content to what has already been envisioned. This way different society types can develop as they want and choose.
* Since this is a Gatherer's discussion. Apart from dungeons or World-Bosses, there could also be mid-high end resources in these parts. Making the economy even stronger, where PVP-Gatherers can sell local-items to the general public. (Doing Caravans from these PVP zones to other locations for an increase price since the PVE Gatherers might not engage in that area).
And yes, I am all for making PVP, PVE zones and anything in between. This will create a more stable diversity among player types and not only that, but also will unify us, where we all can contribute in the greater world design. PVPrs get what they want, PVErs get what they want, and all in between get what they want.
One of the major benefit of having something like this is that it controls gaining Corruption for players that want a "Ride or Die" experience. We all can have a place in the world of Verra.
Remember folks, dont take things so literal and/or personal... In the end, these discussions are all feedback for the moderators to relay to Intrepid on how/what the community thinks, etc.
Always envision something better for all .......
So PVE folks, get with the program, there could be PVP zones with activities that could interest you into risking some type of exposure and/or compromise.
Be well folks!
If the gatherer defends himself then he reduces his loss! This will encourage PvP and eliminate the risk of corruption for the ganker.
there Should always be a risk for gathering or transporting goods in the open world following the risk vs reward design. This is a core principle in the game and I would hate to see this being changed, and ways of mitigating these drops would be a terrible design idea that takes out this risk.
This video is basically says exactly what i trying to say. Open World PVP outside of control is never fair, if your game has the opportunity to griff people, such opportunity will be abused to the maximum possible extent.
bruh now ur confusing me T___T
so you are always in pvp mode, but you set an extra pvp flag on? 2 pvp flags, double pvp T__T
nvm im out i need food
ill watch the full video later but he said the system wont protect players, then he said steven needs to add systems around it to protect non griefers. but it turns out this isnt a copy paste of l2 system...it has other stuffs added to it /facepalm
What exactly is the "other stuff"?
Thanks for this! Very good presentation & summation of issues.
its not the exact system as l2. aoc has the bounty hunter system, the stat dampening system when you gain corruption (which will prevent players to go on a pk spree, since they will be easily defeated, even by a low level) and you only lose your gear when you die as a corrupted player.
yes, there will be some pk, but not as much as you would think. it will mostly be for leveling spots in some areas. most people arent going to be randomly killing people gathering or leveling. there will be pvp from cp tho for a farming spot.
also, fyi, l2 has different versions. when the game released, you could lose any item on death (from pvp or mobs), including your gear (which was extremely hard to acquire back then). it was easier to lose gear and harder to acquire, and the game didnt die, did it? plus exp loss plus death penalties (stat dampening basically).
eventually, things were changed. you could only lose items if you died red (corrupted in aoc language). then a stone was added that u could put in ur weapon so that u wouldnt lose it, even if u were red. then things were added to protect your chest armor...then jewels,=...then a different version of the game released called l2 essence where you can basically pk with no consequence. literally no consequence at all, u dont lose anything, no gear, nothing and it was a more solo oriented game...and even then, most people dont go around pking for no reason. ppl only pked if you were in their leveling spot or if you killed their low level alts.
also, in l2 you have skills such as return, party return and items such as blessed scroll of escape (bsoe), which allow you to teleport back to safety instantly and avoid dying (you would mostly use them if you were red or if you didnt want to lose exp). i havent seen any indication in AOC of such mechanic (plus steven has talked about no instant teleportation). also, karma was very easily cleansed unless you killed a million low levels.
the systems in l2 encourages pking a little bit more, because there is also more safety for pkers. im not saying you will be completely safe in aoc. expect to be killed if you are deep inside a dungeon and you are controlling the best farming spot though. you will also die when your guild is fighting over a raid boss or an area. but other than that, most people will leave you alone unless you annoy them. also consider that there will be people where you are farming, so if someone randomly pk you, they will die instantly to a mob of players making it not worth it for them to pk you in the first place.
havent watched the full video yet, but from the lil bit i watched, the creator has no idea what he is talking about. ill watch it later and comment again
Video partially don't relevant anymore, Steven left comment on the video that clears most things up. However i still have some concerns, with on dead loot drop and chances of that happening if you are decided to fight back against a PK.
Steven replied to the video on YT. Good to know he's seen the feedback and considered it. Now we'll just see how it goes.
Here's his reply:
Steven Sharif:
"Greetings brother, awesome video!
Just a few points I’d love to add.
Much of the Ashes corruption system has taken into account these concerns. In my experience with similar flagging systems, such as that of L2’s, there were very apparent flaws in implementation.
Some of the adjustments that have been made for Ashes’ approach to open world flagging system is as follows;
- Abilities with CC effects do not apply to non-combatants. The target of a cc ability must be flagged in order to suffer the CC effects. This prevents players from opening attacks that stun players during a pull for example.
- Corruption gain also takes into account level disparity between the player killed and the corrupted. The greater the disparity the higher the corruption accrued.
- PK alts would be highly ineffective, since acquiring corruption will apply dampening effects on skill dmg for PvP the higher your corruption score becomes.
- Working corruption off through exp grinding also takes significantly longer than L2, and during that time we’ve created a bounty system that reveals corrupt player locations on the map.
It is true that Ashes is a PvX game. And that means it won’t be for everyone. And that’s ok.
Testing will further refine our approach for corruption, but as a system it is core to introducing risk vs reward in Ashes, while disincentivizing griefing. "
Honestly after watching this video, as well put together as it is, all I can think is that he did no research on what becoming corrupted actually entails as far as penalties goes. Just another PVE carebear wishing for PVE servers by saying open world PvP is dooming any MMO.
In my opinion, players that choose to be gatherers are crafting/exploration oriented players and the best way to make them more happy is to give them more tools they can craft and more ways they can explore. So adding more non-damaging tools to crafting system would be a great way to:
1.Make more resource and gold sinks, adding to the economy.
2.Add some flavor to certain types of crafting like Arcane Engineering (hence 1 use magic shields).
3.Help gatherers occasionally save their lives with prepared magic shield or quick use of some escape tools.
4.Expand the crafting system.
Another good way to help gatherers would be to give them some ways to save their resources via other systems, like religion for example. For religion - maybe you could pray or sacrifice portion of your resources to spirits of the forest for example (like in Shintoism) and they would help you once in a while, by hiding a portion of your resources underground near your death location and help you find them once you get back. Or expand on a mercenary system, by letting people recruit 1 or 2 followers that protect them for a while. Or expand on the player businesses system by letting players open their own resource banks in their Freeholds for example, where you could store your resources (resources should not be accessible to them ofc) during long adventures, before moving everything to town.
All in all I think the best way to approach this issue is to tie it to other systems that are present in Ashes of Creation, make gatherers engage in other systems to help them help themselves.
There could also be a mechanic that makes a dungeon more and more difficult to farm until a guild (A) essentially wipes, and they will continue to wipe until they let it rest after x amount of time. However another guild (B) could go in and get theirs until the same thing happens to them like it did to guild A.
This isn't a proposition to make a dungeon unfarmable. Just one to make players move on or face consequences. It should go with the risk and reward spirit. But it also would help other players in smaller groups get something out of it. Heck, A guild could sink more and more attention into the dungeon until it isn't feasible to have control of it anymore.
Essentially, the dungeon remembers you. And the greedier you are, the more difficult it becomes until by design players are not feasibly able to survive farming it without wiping.
It could get pretty epic.
Or maybe gearsets that you can wear or mods you can apply to gear that alter the dropped % of crafting items. I'd rather see it be based off your crafting skill though honestly. Not too big a fan of this one though.
Or like i saw someone mention in another post here, a crafting skill only bag that you can place items in that either doesn't drop items or has a graduated drop rate (so that as you gain skill in something it allows less and less to be dropped from it). Even locking the container to your professions would be ok with me, that way there is something that will always be dropped (gold or other crafting skill items that your not specifically trained in). Can even make it part of the tradeskill profession quests so that it's easy to lock the container to a specific skill level and tradeskill.
Therefore with no real measure of how impactful a loss might be, perhaps better to wait and try out the systems and provide feedback that suggest to alter an unknown and insufficiently defined system
1) low risk first, high risk later
2) high risk first, low risk later
First category is the one which would prefer to ship the resources to nearby nodes first but exposing themselves to the risk of shipping them with caravans or mules to their own home node / freehold later.
The second category is the one where gathers would rather go all the way back with the resources to their home node / freehold and avoiding paying a part of them to the node or caravan protection.
The game
- must make it obvious to players that there are two kind of gatherers, and to be their decision to chose which kind of gatherers they want to be in that gathering session
- must reward PvP-ers who help the first category more, but also to take into account the affiliation tree hierarchy
You have a reduced risk if you right back....why do you need any more incentive? You literally never even drop equipped gear. Adding containers that remove drops literally defeats the whole purpose. And reduced rate already exists, just fight back.
Here is the danger of PVE bot aspirant carebears in AoC:
- PVE bot/player farms will upgrade their node into a master node that will enslave all nodes around them, the enslaved nodes will become vassal nodes
- vassal nodes pay taxes and node xp to their master node
- vassal nodes can not declare war on their master node
- if slaves gank their masters, then the slaves will be flagged as red and then their carebear masters can kill the red slaves and steal all the slave's loot
So the AoC morals are upside down at the momment because the Corruption system, the Corruption system monopolizes violence against people who won't stay onlline 12 hours a day farmining PVE.
Monopoly over violence creates oppression, the slave nodes can't fight wars or assymetrical wars by using ganks against the master's pve farms.
A solution could be that as pvp happens a lot in a area for gathering resources, the environment starts to go after the pvp players much more than those not engaged in combat. basically the corruption system makes enemies across the world more likely to target them. There would need to be a lower yield to the resources to make exploiting it less useful but that is what testing is for.
I'd hate to see a meta culture of people just waiting to gank someone who farms the rare earth node just to steal it when they arent a Miner, but at the same time that's pretty exciting. -In vanilla wow if you were a herbalist and came across a black lotus spawn you instantly got adrenaline and paranoid spinning your camera around in all directions looking for a threat. In general your main competition was other Herbalists, but people would still guard it till their homie could get there and herb it.
A proximity based drop chance % could be interesting.
A reduced drop chance after certain timer intervals is another idea
A 2-3 protected from dropping bag slots could be another- but that might mean nothing valuable drops
you dont drop all your materials on death...only a portion of them .-.
incentive for what? the question this whole thread is about is answering:
I think in the roleplaying aspect of the game, if I have taken the time to master a set of crafting skills in a world of pvp I would have also learned how to better hide those tradeskill items as I travel in the world if for no other reason than out of the need to if I want to become a master craftsmen.
I am not advocating for it to be reduced to 0 but I don't think a 25% reduction from the default rate is an unreasonable amount (for someone at max reduction rate), or perhaps having a smaller container that I can place the rarer items in that give me a boosted rate to better increase my odds of not dropping that thing I just farmed hours for. Again, not reducing it to 0 just something more than the default value as a benefit of having mastered a skill.
You talk as if fighting back is a better choice for everyone, always. I can assure you that not everyone will be good enough that fighting back is their best option. There are going to be some people that, either due to terrible skill, gear, level or number of other reasons, will still have 0 chance at winning the fight. For those people, a better option might be to not fight back at all.
Maybe the attacker will realize that they are gonna have to eat a corruption cost in order to find out what items that person is holding/going to drop and have to decide if it's worth it. Maybe they will decide that it's not worth it and leave. If not they at least eat the corruption cost and the person being killed can hope that their death is the one that pushes that person over the limit to get flagged on the map. Or maybe they think that if the person has to eat a corruption cost they won't come back to that area once they have killed them so now they are free (at least for a time) to farm the area for resources unmolested.
Everyone is so gung-ho about pvping and no one ever stops to think about making pvper's think of the cost. It's just an afterthought. I like that the pve people have a weapon of their own to use against pvp folks that isn't just joining the pvp side of the argument. I want to make a pvp person have to keep in the back of their mind that if they don't see me swinging they need to be mindful of that. Maybe they are wacking away at me and I am jousting them like i'm fighting them (just doing a crap job of it) but if they aren't paying attention they are going to eat a corruption for killing my empty bags and crap farming gearset.
Or maybe I'm the bait for a group that's waiting in a freehold 1 minute away and I just need to keep them fighting and die just before the group arrives to kill the now corrupt flagged player and get that much more loot from them.
pvpers already have to think about their consequences T_T
if you reduce the risk for the gatherers, why not reduce the reward as well? or why not reduce the risk for the pvper too? what makes you so special or different? why r u entitled to more protection than me? pvers already have it hard when they have to deal with pve griefers, karma bombers, mob droppers... and on top of that people wanna add less risk for greens and more punishment for combatants xDD
Or an epic revenge story.