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
However as an avid PKer I simply oppose the idea as I personally enjoy the idea of both losing gatherable materials when I am outnumbered, or out-skilled by an opponent even if I am not flagged AND the idea of creating hunting parties at rare gatherable locations.
Removing or mitigating or even allowing players ways to avoid this would dynamically impact the feeling of freedom and choice that the MMORPG genre is defined by, griefing is a potential problem but personally the griefers can and will be dealt with by other players, friends, guildmates and the support tickets inevitably placed upon abusers of the system.
If anything some clear definitions on what is dropped upon death with some numbers/percentages and whether or not Legendary/Rare gatherable materials would also be droppable would be much appreciated as it will allow the people who want to avoid combat let their worries be eased, or let the potential PKers know the risk/reward associated with targeting a player.
Thanks for reading.
In BDO you get ganked while in gathering gear all the time. But there, it is more because someone doesn't want to share resources with you, and there is no real consequence other than some karma loss that you get back by grinding.
If the only consequence here is that you have to grind some corruption off, but you possibly get rare gather-able materials without needing high gathering skill. Then it doesn't seem like a good system. Why even bother farming.
We're technically viewing this from opposite sides in a way.
Bots aren't as much of a problem as 'underpaid real RMT' or 'bot monitoring groups'.
Because those are the ones that are hard to distinguish from normal players. I'm not saying that one should just 'not fight bots', I'm moreso talking about a type of 'entrapment'. Bots must always be 'found' and 'trapped'. And while that is happening, they are having their economic effect.
I'm saying that 'funneling them into something where they don't have as much impact and they are easy to deal with' is better than 'causing them to seek niches where they could do much more damage before they are caught'.
But the Corruption system as it stands, explicitly incentivizes players to be MORE similar to bots with their gathering alts and whatever else. Bots don't benefit from the corruption that other players gain for attacking them, for THEM it's often pure loss. But the way corruption is implied to work, 'staying low level' is the best bet for gathering alts and similar, so it gives bots more chance to blend in, causing community outcomes that I personally view as negative.
When gathering is easy enough, the difference between a 'real player' and 'a bot monitored by a player who is doing something else or semi-afk' is pretty hard to know, these days. But that's a different, often-discussed question.
tl;dr Easier Lower Level gathering will almost always be low profit too, so bots existing in that space is LESS harmful IF you can't stop them easily.
While gathering, I hope it can be somewhat relaxing & not too anxiety inducing when you see other players. While the threat of them ganking you is real I'd rather have more friendly player interactions then constant pvp everytime someone catches you gathering a herb. Otherwise, I believe it really will become a cat and mouse game as gathers will just hide & run everytime.
Perhaps, something along the lines of the more you gather the less you drop % wise. For example, you gather 10 herbs then you'll drop 5 of those when killed but if you gathered 100 then you'd drop 20 instead (going from 50% to 20% resource loss for the victim). Could also implement the longer you hang onto those herbs then that % will go up. Instead of dropping 20 of the 100 you gathered it'll go up by 5% every hour(??) Your out in the wild. Could also make that % go down instead the longer you're out (20% to 17% after an hour) to encourage players to explore more to find even more rare resources.
Just my 2 cents on the topic. Will be pretty hard to balance out but can't wait to see what the devs come up with.
"Mitigate or eliminate the risk of dropping gathered materials." Eliminate? Is this even a serious question? Is someone holding Steven hostage? Is he sick? Feeling the heat of unanticipated competition from other pvp-esque mmos like T&L and AA 2?
The question on it's face is so ridiculous and destroys/trivializes systems and concepts that have been in place for years. You, the devs, kind of need to give an example of what you're talking about, an implementation of it, to be discussed.
Otherwise you're just going to get the typical pvers saying yeah eliminate the risk to gatherers, and the typical early supporters of AoC saying no, keep the original vision.
Something I think will happen quickly is that there will be websites for crafted buy orders. I can't family teleport, use a flight path, or take the science metropolis airship with materials or processed goods, but I can take all those forms of fast travel with crafted goods on me. So it makes sense to put out a buy order, and have a crafter on the other side of a map fill out that order at their location, then fast travel over to me and give me my completed weapon for gold. I don't even think crafted goods are going to be caravaned over, although maybe pots and consumables will be, which I agree should be droppable by a caravan.
I don't think there should be permanent BoE for everything, maybe a week-long BoE when some conditions are met would be a good fix? Teleport across the map with armor in your inventory, that's now bound to you for a week. And I like the idea of caravaned gear being able to drop.
You can purchase a unique item of variable quality that you keep in your inventory. If you are killed by a player, the item disappears and saves a percentage of what you were carrying, depending on the quality of insurance. Then you have to buy more insurance. No insurance means normal pvp looting applies.
Perhaps the item is a consumable that only protects your loot for X minutes and it can't be triggered while in combat.
Although my plan is to be a Master Gatherer I feel that mitigation and especially elimination of dropping gatherable would remove the enjoyable pressure/stress of making it back to town/freehold safely after finding a super rare gatherable.
I am not apposed to it strongly, but I think it may take away from those that really want to focus on becoming main gatherers
Gathering will be an essential role and not something that should be done alone unless you're willing to place a target on your back. The reward should outweigh the risk, but if there is no risk then that lowers the profit margin of the harvestable and as a profit-driven woman, I don't like my bottom dollar being restricted any more than necessary. I'm usually very anti-PvP, I don't like the idea of getting ganked while I'm out minding my own business picking daisies---but I'm also not entirely opposed to the concept of watering my herbs with the blood of my enemies. With that in mind, here's what I think would make for a good marriage between PvP and flower picking and it utilizes something that's already in the game:
Combat Pets could be just the buffers that Gathers need in order to feel comfortable adventuring out to harvest their next load of goods. We know that a Combat Pet can fill the role of Tank, DPS, or Healer and that they'll also have gear that's available to them. What if a Master Gatherer is able to purchase Pet gear from a vendor that increases the pet's range of detection? If you're busy chopping a tree, you may not notice that there's a shadow lurking behind you. Luckily, Mr. Cuddles your Combat Pet Koala has alerted you that there's something sinister approaching from behind. Oh, but maybe instead of Mr. Cuddles, you decided to bring along Sneak Snake, your danger noodle Combat Pet Anaconda. Sneak Snake has a special backpack that allows him to carry a portion of your goods and since he's such a slippery sneak, he can stealth away with those goodies should you die an embarrassing death.
Ideally, you would want to swap out your pet and/or pet gear to best fit the harvesting situation. If you're able to adventure with Guildies---then you'd want a pet that can carry some goods that won't drop in case of battle or perhaps a pet with utility skills that allow you to slip among the foilage unseen.
Either way, I don't think it's necessarily important that a Gatherer be able to easily defeat an aggressor. They should be more likely to slip away from a Combatant, thus making it a toss-up on whether or not hunting Gatherers are even worth the effort. If I'm out hunting for some PvP action and I see someone mining ore, I shouldn't automatically be able to assume they're an easy kill. If I'm hunting them for materials, I should have to put in some effort to secure the loot they're carrying---after all, they've worked hard for their materials and even if I'm only gaining a fraction of what they have---it should cost me more effort than a meteor storm or fireball spell.
Kind of like when a Treasure Goblin spawns in Diablo 3. You can hit it a few times, but it's going to bolt across the map and aggro a horde of enemies. It'll drop a few goods along the way, but if you want that pay off you need to kill it before it ports away. The thrill of the hunt is knowing that you can potentially lose your prey.
In New World people can gather with the PvP activated, or deactivated. If they have it turned off, they collect much less resources. I would not have this option in Ashes.
If a player have the PvP turned on, this person still have two options: gather with specific clothes (weak for combat, but powerfull for collecting more resources), or gather with his same combat equipment (having less bonuses on collecting resources).
You can have this exact system with the Ashes flag system.
If people want to collect safer, they will loose some quality and quantity, but can defend theirselves better.
If people want to take more risks, they can put specific equipment to collect more resources.
If people are killed during the gathering, they may drop part of what they gather, or just the most rare items collected.
They aren't dropping everything so they are still returning home with something and progressing. I think risk should be as constant of a thing as it can be and shouldn't be optional.
If something like this was felt necessary then i'd rather it be implemented in a way that each material/item has it's own drop chance/percent. Lower tier materials might have a lower drop chance and higher tier materials have an increased chance to drop. I kind of like this idea since it means the system could be easily to spread to items that aren't flagged as resources/processed materials.
PVP - flag system is a pathetic joke because you need to flag to lose less items, that is not risk vs reward, that is put bluntly lazy devs trying to force a gameplay loop. It is literally just LOSS & i'll prove it.
I have no items, I flag, I kill you. No risk, But rewarded.
You have items, You don't flag or even if you do flag, you die, Major loss due to major risk. (don't forget the time & effort, Also combat against mobs to clear the area On Top)
So yes this needs to be rethought out.
*Oh but reputation - Meme not one cares.
*Oh but corruption - Meme no one cares, because you will already be in a area capable to earning it off.
*oh but *insert here any excuse = MeME! Because look harder!
So add a harsher penalty to GatherGankers? - No, Why? It literally wont change a thing that would be the same as not having a system in place, in the first place. .e.t.c
So we come to Mitigating the loss of gathering must be earned someone said earlier. I agree. Skill, progression level unlock, but in no way related to PVP.
It doesn't need to even be a skill to *Not drop items, a Return teleport would literally solve this issue, while keeping high risk. you get caught, well you get caught, But this gives Gankers the Risk of not catching you. So at least some risk for them...meme risk still, but more than planned.
My concern is even though I am right, Bots will abuse any easy system.
You'd get lots of naked people doing everything if gear was trivial.
NO
but... What if a "ganker" couldn't recognize an item in a player's inventory by sight because they don't know what it is, so it shows up as 'unknown' or 'common' forcing them to decide if it's worth looting? No name, no description because they lack the life knowledge (skill profession) to be able to say, "That's a widget!" What if they couldn't break that fourth wall so easily?
Just a thought.
Great discussion so far everyone! Thanks for listening.
All I know is if you give players the means to kill other players they are gonna take it. That being said if you want mechanics on stealing resources and killing players in free roam then there should be A pendulum of effects.
If A player is looking to play normally then they would go fight someone who is gathering or carrying resources and receive the anticipated reward on success. However other player might be taking this opportunity to grief under the guise of playing the game as intended.
Should A player target the same individual repeatedly they should receive punishment or debuffs so that continuing this will no longer be possible. This could work with a reputation system or Bounty systems.
Also its important that the defending player doesn't get hit with these effect instead.
Its alright to keep PvP in the game but not to make low level/weaker players hate the game.
balance. Naked should not tank.
More generalized comments:
The think I am more worried about is that there might be a slight flaw in the Corruption system. I think the Corruption system should work most of the time, but there is one possible situation where it wont stop greifing. Specifically, lets say two even level players are in a pvp brawl (both now purple), and a much higher level player comes by and decides to delete both players and take their gear, they wont get any corruption since the two players in the consensual pvp brawl are now flagged combatant.
Without some level disparity check giving corruption to this high level greifer, they get free loot.
While I agree with you, I do think that alternative gathering methods with low/no risk are ok as long as the risky method is far and away the most profitable, fastest, available, etc.
As long as the majority of players are putting themselves at risk to gather, and it's the best and most fun way for me to gather, I'm happy as a pvper.
Steps must also be taken to ensure the no risk methods aren't infested with bots.
Specifically, I suggest you make the PvP flagging system interesting: Make flag-timers longer than they currently are, in order to encourage more interactive headhunting and bodyguarding. Make sure flagging has interesting interactions with node diplomacy status. That alone should make the whole issue fun enough for everyone involved that brain-afk crafters should feel rewarded for being careful and regaining lost resources, which will make it easier for them to accept stray ganks; and when things escalate to large hunting parties, those should be met with large territory protection parties anyway.
Something like this is a very very very slippery slope, and IMO is reminiscent of what NW did a couple years prior to launch, so please don't follow them.
Having a sense of danger/risk on your adventures in Ashes is an extremely important element of the game to preserve. Don't take away from that experience because care bears will request a safe zone. Thought processes and conversations like this during alpha are what ultimately changed and killed New World out of the gate - I hope that intrepid is significantly more resolute on their vision of the game and are already confident on their own plans for these sort of PvP interactions in Ashes.