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
If you think that will ruin the experience then consider that I probably won't play the game since the PvE likely won't be The Second Coming of Christ, and PvP does not allow one to progress.
All loot from a non-corrupted player is marked forever (maybe some quest to clean);
1- It cannot be sold to NPCs
2- It cannot be listed on auction houses
3- Anyone receiving/trading corrupted loot gets corruption points.
Why?
1- Its thematic to the word "Corruption" and with the system.
2- All risk are with the Gathrerers, and TIME is the resource they will lose more.
3- Killers have absolutely no risk for killing gatherers, and they could kill and someone else take the loot anyway.
4- As a Ultima Online, Albion and EVE player i guarantee killers will get around the system.
Bonus
1- Opens Black Market possibilities.
2- Opens Quests/Activities to clean the itens.
Example 1:
A PvPer sees a gatherer picking herbs or mining or what have you. PvPer engages the gatherer. The gatherer, in this example, engages, to mitigate loss. The PvPer got the first few hits in, after engaging, so it's likely they win (We'll say they do, for this example). The gatherer now has to vacate that area or be prepared to lose another % of their harvest, which, now the PvPer will know what the gatherer is carrying, roughly how much (within a ballpark), what the gatherer's combat capabilities are, and the gatherer is now flagged as a combatant (Assuming the PvP system doesn't reset flags upon death, as opposed to a timer). This means the gatherer, who was likely gathering the items for a specific purpose in mind, has been delayed until they feel they can return to harvest, which, knowing PvPers, will likely be a while.
In this example, the gatherer has no real defense against this. Don't get me wrong, as an avid PvPer myself, I see tons of benefit. It doesn't seem very fun to the farmer, though.
Example 2:
Same setup, the engagement happens. But this time, the gatherer decides to take the loss and corrupt the PvPer. So he dies, loses half of his crafting mats (Or whatever potentially arbitrary percentage), respawns, and goes back to gathering. If the PvPer finds the items obtained worth eating a ton of corruption, the gatherer is going to have to either engage to try to kill the assailant or, as in the first example, resume gathering some other time.
In Example 2, the PvPer wins more potential value, but takes corruption. It's likely this character/player is unconcerned with the consequences of corruption. Since corruption isn't set in stone, it's unknown what the severity or consequence is, so it's difficult to quantify the decision making process.
Example 3
The PvPer engages the gatherer. The gatherer does not flag or run and stands still. The PvPer stops before killing the gatherer and looms nearby. When the gatherer attempts to harvest again, the PvPer engages or makes a basic attack against the gatherer to stop the harvest to try to bait the gatherer into combat by, essentially, harassing them. Then it reverts to one of the above scenarios. (This scenario does assume that combat stops the harvest. We can substitute a CC ability or something of the like, if that's not the case, just for the sake of the example)
In Example 3, the PvPer is just flat out toxic. It's nice to have some variety in open world PvP, but if this became normal, I wouldn't be caught dead gathering so much as a level 1 herb.
There should certainly be some way for a gatherer to mitigate the risk. But there should always be some risk. For instance, maybe an "Atrax's Farmhand Sickle" or a "Fickle God's Right Sandles" that provides 50% chance to drop no loot at all, but a 5% chance to drop all of your crafting mats or whatever else is droppable. That's a horrible example, but you get the idea. Or maybe a huge backpack that slows movement speed but drops less loot. I think anything like this would have to be pretty rare. If it became too prolific, I think it would damage the PvP health of the game.
I also hope an in-game PvP bounty system (Player driven bulletin board or something) will eventually exist. This increases the social aspect of interacting with other players and might make someone think a bit more before trying to prey on someone in their own region.
Honestly, everything Intrepid does it nearly holy to me, at this point. I assume if anything becomes overwhelmingly negative to the overall player base, it would be addressed. So, no matter what, I'm not very worried. Alpha-2 will be a pretty good testing ground for it all, I imagine.
It would be good to give the devs another system they can tweak if they need to make adjustments to balance gathering, but please don't make it a self-sufficient system - please encourage players to be co-dependent for security in a dangerous world.
If you provide a safety mechanic for solo gatherers, would this affect social friction? (I think it would lead to more solo play)
Wouldn't it be cooler to have gatherers travel in groups? (perhaps with a guard?)
Could players create a market providing other gatherers protection in exchange for a cut of their gatherings?
Are there systems that provide transparency into inventories, so that gatherers don't just keep the best for themselves? Would you like to leave some wiggle room for gatherers to create drama trying to smuggle high quality items past the portioning of gathered goods at the end of a gathering session? (Maybe no inventory transparency, but an obvious sparkle/chime when a gatherer oncovers a rare material - so players are vaguely aware if someone found something interesting)
What would happen if two of these groups collided to claim territory of a gathering area?
If you are paying a gatherer for their gathering services - who should be responsible for the gatherer's/mule/inventory safety? Should the risk be mitigated by the gatherer's artisan skills, or should you be taking proactive measures to ensure the safety of the goods (and gatherer)?
Unlike EVE online, gatherers aren't completely vulnerable and can fight for themselves - which suggests gatherers in their current state will be self-sufficient - is this the design intention?
For the jobs that get posted on the town noticeboard - how labour intensive do you expect these jobs to be? Soloable? Bulk orders? Both? Can I suggest you keep these categories seperate so that there's clear intention for players to coordinate as a group to take on bulk orders?
tl;dr - don't think another system is necessary, except as another balancing lever for devs, but if you did add one please design it to encourage group interdependence.
My main concern is that it seems like this game is built around pvp, if you make drastic changes to diss encourage open world pvp, without having the PVE to back it up you get New World. Please don’t New World my ashes.
I would suggest waiting till Alpha 2 and further testing and feed back from a lager player base till you start making changes like this.
I used to be all about full-loot PvP; I thought what many in this very thread did - it helped to incentivise PvP.
The reality is, it doesn't. It breeds poor PvP experience, counter-intuitive and asymmetric gameplay, and ultimately disincentivises engagement, and that feeds a bad PvP loop.
Here's what usually happens when loot PvP is a thing;
You can see this with run-away meta, where people will do high-risk activities on builds designed never to engage. Seems reasonable at face value, but then it defeats the purpose of PvP - there's no fight.
Similarly, you will see players only engage when they have the advantage; and usually, this comes in the form of numbers. 5:1 is the same as 25:5, and it pushes the needle for gameplay into a higher level of organisational burden - you WILL need a big guild. You never have all of your guildies online at the same time all the time. This squeezes out smaller guilds and groups (look at any throneworld sim, small guilds don't really exist alone, and they are a key part of a player's journey and lifecycle).
Some might say, "Good, join a big guild; that's the way to play", but the problem with that is some people don't want that - they simply move on to another game. Games live and die by the people playing them - you don't need to pander to different player types, but you do need to accommodate for the various ways people want to play and engage with gameplay loops. People will play the game for what it offers but will determine how to engage with that content. Look at raiding in WoW; not everyone does or enjoys Mythic; some people just like doing their weekly LFR. Likewise, sometimes people just roam in a small band of their IRL friends.
If you're a PvP game, you need a mix of small-scale content to keep the wheels on; otherwise, there are large chunks of nothing to do when the big organisations' aren't operating (people sleep, and MMO gameplay cycles are in the months, not days). A great case study on this is Crowfall - lots of small scalers wanted to play it because the mechanics felt good and the concept was appealing - but the maps were crowded out by 80+ zergs of alliances and guilds. Small scalers zoned in, got portal camped, lost all their gear, and the game died.
This varies on how hard gear scales for time investment to the performance increase, but usually, it's the gear in the middle that gets used the most. It doesn't really matter how good or geared you are; there is an upper limit on how many people you can fight alone or in a group. With great capability and teamwork, you can punch many times above your weight, but there is a limit somewhere, and gear can't overcome it. You become a very juicy loot-pinata.
You just won't risk the top-tier stuff when you aren't assured of victory - why would you? It's not worth the risk of getting mobbed 20:1. "Get scouts, or just don't engage", I hear, is that the solution? To not play PvP and just run away? What a great gameplay loop. PvP by not PvPing. Every single piece of a PvP gameplay framework should be driving people to engage and fight constantly - it needs to be as high interaction as possible. Otherwise, it's "dead".
Why risk anything? For real PvPers, a fight is usually its own reward. How often do you go roaming, looking for stuff to fight? Roaming is a core part of an open-world PvP loop. As I mentioned earlier, people will only fight when they can win - if they deem the odds to be against them, they will run or hide, or not undertake any activity without those odds. As a game designer, you want people to PLAY and engage with your game, not wait around until appropriate to play.
PvP is all about getting the fight. I can't begin to tell you the number of organised PvP nights that hit snags because of gear breaking or being wiped. Often when you lose a close fight - you just want to immediately get back out there and go again. Instead, you have to spend 20 minutes faffing around, visiting the bank, regearing, checking consumes, and making sure everyone in the group is ready. After a couple of wipes, that's it for the night. Everyone logs off, and you gotta spend a day doing stuff other than PvP to rebuild your gear stockpile. Death is a part of PvP, no one has an infinite KDR - it can be very high in a good group, but it only takes a couple of loot-loss times to really rob momentum from the gameplay experience.
Gatherers won't give PvPers a good experience, simply because they usually aren't experienced PvPers. It's seal-clubbing. Gatherers aren't always advanced players - it's often people who are earlier in their player lifecycle. Those who have been around for a while will do gathering as-they-go, rarely as their main gameplay loop. Focussed gathering is because you have a goal to fulfill.
Ultimately, it leads to a negative gameplay experience for a new player - not everyone is so generous to return a newbies kit. When you start to push negative gameplay experiences on people by forcing them into unwinnable or unengaging loops, it slowly chokes the population over the course of weeks and month as players drop off, or find other things that are more up their alley.
Ganking newbies gathering is the realm of D-tier pretenders anyway- it's not really that fun for us sweaty adrenaline junkies who ride or die for the fight that has stacked odds that we somehow pull off. The experience of killing a gather is usually a lot of hope (ooh do they have fat loot) followed by a lot of sad (oh, it's just a ton of sticks).
Putting rare resources in PvP zones is fine - but adding the layer of drop will result in monopolisation and skew. Monopolisation sounds great, but long-term it can be highly problematic. Look at what challenges New World is having now - we have held the centre 3 towns for nearly 8 months now on the last APAC server; the gear difference between the rest of the server population and us is wild. We have the millions and millions (probably billions by now) of gold to sink into resources to get the top-tier gear, simply because we monopolised trade. This applies to controlling rare or high-tier resources in PvP zones - bigger guilds can control all supply.
The wider the gap, the more the status quo stagnates and relies on internecine drama to drive change. EVE is a good example of this - if you control the wealthy high-production areas of zero security space, your war chests are much deeper. It becomes much harder for newer or poorer coalitions to drive you out. Some of the biggest entities to fall weren't really beaten, they simply collapsed from political infighting. Is that the gameplay you want?
This is something that is actually necessary - but loot-drop doesn't really factor in here. Botting is about efficiency and yield - if PvP nodes have a much higher yield to combat efficiency loss from distance or time, the act of killing a bot can relegate them to farming low-tier nodes. This can raise the floor of high-volume resources.
While botting isn't allowed - it's an ever-present and persistently challenging problem to squash. Simply put, if you move the needle for gain to require human brains to assess for danger, you can combat a lot of bots. The challenge becomes preventing bots from horizon scanning and logging off when they detect hostiles - but a long logout timer in a PvP zone can help to fix that.
'ghost walk' on respawn. 5 seconds +50% MS with indication of where you are after 2.5 seconds during ghost walk to other players.
Choice of respawn in an area; if died in wild, somewhere between road and where you died with some max distance from death point. If died near or on a road, somewhere along the road or just off the road with some max distance along road.
If you died near a node, somewhere between where you died and the node with some max distance from where you died.
25 yard radius around respawn either way; plus the ghost walk.
Should solve most situations
Tbh the current corruption system is fine.
It incentivizes ganking for higher grade mats to make it worth ganking them to begin with, and your average joe won't get ganked nonstop for gathering T1 mats just because they can without incurring a penalty. Having gatherers lose a % when fighting back and dying and having them lose more of a % when not fighting back and dying, but give the attacker corruption should work fine. The attacker won't grief lowbies just for a handful of T1 mats and lowbies can chill and gather with the odd chance of dying to reds. If they want to attack a gatherer gathering high grade material the gatherer should already be on-par with the attackers level. This assumption was made that high grade materials will be found in tough locations requiring gear and level to defend yourself and perhaps even kill to even get there to begin with.
If you want to take from a player and you yourself have no mats on you you're in favor already.
At the end of the day slaying gatherers sounds fun and i would do it all day, but it will kill your game. No shot they're keeping a healthy amount of players if there's no way to reduce the loss.
If they're looking for a way to reduce the loss of losing mats more than the current corruption system already provides, i would suggest they add a perk that you can spec into for less mat loss % but miss out on other top tier perks as a balance.
Processing and crafting more to the summoner class and maybe to other support classes too.
The summoner is a creator of gear and creatures.
The healer could make food and poison.
A: Idealy, i would not like to see "alternative play loops that provide you with a way to mitigate or eliminate the risk of dropping gathered materials".
But if end up being a thing, in my opinion: Eliminate? Definitely no.
Mitigate? Depends on the level of mitigation, 10%? 20% less materials dropped? Sure but nothing beyond that.
As long as those mitigation methods are hard to acquire as to not be easily abusable at lower levels and as long as the hard opposite route is also a thing (Making people drop 10%? 20% more materials dropped?).
Allowing people to choose a more defensive or aggressive(more or less risk vs reward) playstyle without without damaging either of them.
Aren't we all sinners?
I mean, yeah sure. But I dunno how well that would tie in with the Open World PvP Attack Whoever You Like thing you've got going on. I'm not sure that "eliminating" it is the way to go, but sure, if you can put some sort of mitigation on it, then go for it.
Either way making it safer will make botting safer.
✨
Of course, only those players who have turned on open pvp should attack each other.
If someone isn't comfortable with taking the risk of gathering, then they may:
But the ability to not drop materials or the ability to become unattackable? Hell no, that would be hands down the worst design decision Intrepid has ever made and directly go against everything the core design of the game stands for.
Player Interaction
Both as a collarabotive effort and hostile interactions are facilitated through Gatherers (the backbone behind the entire economy) being under constant threat.
Taking that away would directly go against this design principle.
Player Agency + Risk vs. Reward
The ability to be attacked and to attack with tangible reward creates player Agency.
The decision when to gather, what to gather, with whom to gather creates Player Agency by allowing you to how large the risk and reward you are willing to take is.
Meaningful conflict over scarce resources
How do you want to feature meaningful conflict over scarce resources if you take out the conflict?
Going out in the world should risk treachery, death and things not going according to plan.
Its a PvX MMO, not WoW. Stick to your guns instead of pulling a New World.
This I think is a brilliant idea.. To add to this or maybe as an alternative to this, maybe a system where if you're leveled enough in a particular gathering profession, there could be perks like at level 20 of that profession, the chance to drop materials is reduced by 20% or something.
Players who attack others often choose battles of which they can win. Having the advantage of numbers, equipment, chokepoint locations to choose from, and the initiative of opening the attack. These advantages that attackers carry could justify having a higher risk of dropping gathered materials, as they have a lower risk of death.
Those who defend themselves lack those advantages. To make matters worse, they have unique disadvantages, such as fighting NPCs for access to their gatherables. Their risk of death is higher than that of a group that is on the offensive. This could justify a reduction of gathered materials dropped for those who are on the defensive.
This could be done by splitting the combatants of the PvP flagging system into two. Defensive combatants and offensive combatants.
- Those who attack non-combatants or defensive combatants turn into offensive combatants.
- Those who are non-combatants that attack a offensive combatants turn into defensive combatants.
- Non-combatants who heal defensive combatants become defensive combatants.
- If a player kills a defensive combatant, the player does not become corrupted.
- AoE heals from defensive combatants can support non-combatants and defensive combatants, while AoE attacks ignore them.
- Guards of nodes ignore non-combatants and defensive combatants. They only attack offensive combatants and the corrupted.
With a new PvP flag status, this would allow for the developers to adjust gatherable rules accordingly, if the need arises during testing.Can this question be asked again after Alpha 2 has been started??? maybe the corruption system is good enough as if I want to gather and I'm killed all the time that's just not enjoyable for me. May or may not be enjoyable for others I just guess it's not too fun for them either
I plan on getting alpha 2 and want to see the corruption system in action, test the interface for making guilds and such etc. Quite a gamble to spend cash on, but i want to see for myself. appears to be a risk vs reward thing which is fine, the meaningful combat thing is fine. but if I do NOT attack seems to mean I don't want to pvp really and they can go off and do something else.
If I'm just gathering or heck even leveling and I don't attack I don't want to do the pvp thing all day everyday. now structured events that's actually ok like sieges, caravans, and castles and the whatnot. i will do that but i think gathering/leveling specifically i want to chill, look over my shoulder every once in a while and gather or level. not every 2 seconds.
I have seen some suggestions of a really in depth system suggested in this thread but 9 or 10 layers of a system is just too much. Keep it simple tends to work out better I think. Corruption sounds simple enough but it just needs to be tried out so ya ask maybe again after it has been tested?
Seems that if I do not attack i lose more stuff, but that may be worth it as that player would become corrupted. Seems a bit of a deterrent which sounds ok as i generally dont want to. And they have to really consider If it's worth killing me. I also wonder would they just kill me to the point of near death and then drag a mob to finish me off.....lol? with the corruption system I am warming to the idea of pvp a little bit as it somewhat makes it "seem" meaningful with some risk vs reward which i can kinda get with. really depends on how the corruption plays out. maybe the corruption system should not exist? i am unclear a little bit from reading the forum post.
Or maybe people like me should not look at games with open pvp on all the time is another possibility. Actually it is likely the answer. I just assume there are a lot of people that would enjoy the game more as they like the PvE side more and just dont not fond of pvp ALL the time especially when trying to get things done.
Or maybe i'm just thinking about this wrong and Ashes is just too hardcore for people like me lol. Now i fully realize that this just may not be the game for people like myself. I do kinda think i'm fine with the potential risk vs reward with corruption, but.....i just dont know anymore lol
One other thought, players killing bots should not be a thing??? thats intrepids job to handle botting not ours.
Maybe just Ashes is simply just not for casual players. I like economy, crafting, dungeon, raids, etc. open to try socializing to get big open world raids and dungeons done. When i pvp i usually play unreal tournament.
yeah....now that i think of it.....ashes seems is pretty very hardcore
I just wonder should i "git gud" at pvp, but im also thinking say I was gathering with 1 or 2 other people. they are prolly gonna be casual ish too and we'd all get wrecked. or even leveling same thing maybe.
But in the end, it's what Steven wants to play, and thats absolutely fine. i mostly want to play what steven wants to play too. but i dont think i'm hardcore like steven is.
I think i disagree with the game being "PvX" is it called? why not just call it straight PvP? it's fine to be straight PvP with a little PvE but calling it pvx seems odd to me. Ashes seems to go hard with the PvP it somewhat seems.
I wonder how this ashes endeavor will play out, super duper hardcore audience and very very few casuals... will definitly work for the hardcore. And that's absolutely fine for sure, you just dont want the casuals, and that's fair enough. But i just think it's lying to say casual people are welcome in a way. i think that was actually said in a dev interview. A hardcore game for hardcore people will very likely work, prolly enough people to pay the game for just them. Just unfair to say casual players will be a thing in ashes.
Perfectly fine with hardcore in depth systems, hardcore in depth artisian, hardcore group dungeon and raids actually. I really want to play a game with a player driven economy, seems wonderful so far. with what i read. but geez killed without the risk vs reward even deterrent of corruption for people that dont raise a fist i wouldn't agree with. I mentioned that as i saw some posters saying it should be removed entirely i believe. but it's hardcore.
sorry i rambled some...
drat...
i just dont wanna get, is the word "grief" or "ganked" all the damn time.
thanks if you read this far. tried to collect my thoughts some before posting but being a scatterbrain it's hard sometimes. maybe i should just stick to WoW and ROSE lmao....geez
Being fully loaded should reduce speed.
High tier and legendary items and materials, in inventory or equipped should cancel gatherer specific movement speed.
Lore meaning:
high tier = greed = corruption
I played a survival game called RUST for a long time, and the feeling of "risk vs reward" that Steven talks about on stream brings me the same feelings I used to experience in RUST.
In RUST you loose everything in your inventory if you die, making farm sessions very stressful and winning fights super rewarding, just the though of losing your farm/gear used to make my adrenaline rush like no other game.
The PK should do the least amount of work to pull off the heist, not just kill, take the whole resource and run away.
Collectors should have profession (or equipment) bonuses that allow them to carry more weight on the resources of their specialization.
The Punishment assigned to the PK, causes him to flee the area and incapable of carrying all the victim's resources for not having the bonuses, unless the PK has the same specialization or someone in his group, with skill or equipment that he has. allow to be part of the Loot.
With that giving the victim collector the opportunity, return to the place and recover a part of the theft.
* I like the idea of having large groups hogging resources, it would make the game really competitive and add value to the material.
* My only fear is with the evolution of the profession, and if these activities drastically hinder the evolution of the players.
That said, there are so many other incentives for PvP why do you feel the need to pick on gatherers? Gatherers already have the environment to overcome with beasts and bandits and just finding locations; why must there be a need to add more grief to gatherers?
Formerly T-Elf