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
Sure, most are risk averse, but why should the gatherers face most of the risk? That's not a fair system. They are the ones doing all the work, putting in the time. Gatherers will mostly be solo because resource nodes aren't shared.
I prefer most of the risk being applied on the caravan system level. If done well, the defenders have tools to prepare for being attacked on the road. They can ask more friends/guildies to join and add NPC guards too. The stakes are much higher because of the higher amount of goods being transported. Even if the risk for the caravan attackers are still low compared to the potential reward, I am totally fine with that, because the defenders have much more agency in preparing for it. It's a proper gameplay loop in Ashes. A trio running around ganking solo gatherers isn't.
You say the game should reward patience and ability to click many times that resource to gather it.
If the resource is rare, and if nobody can loot you, then is first come first serve.
You as "someone with a full time job" why don't you see yourself as somebody who just arrives to the rare resource and another player grabbed it moments before?
Why don't you attack him and fight for that resource? Would you do that if an NPC grabs that resource moments before you arrive?
What if all players would look like NPCs?
All mounts and pets are treated as an extension of the player character, and I am 99% sure they said in a video that if you kill a non-combatant mule, you get corrupted. I am 100% sure you get flagged as a combatant as soon as you attack it. It was an old video and I am not gonna go look for it, so take that as you will
cant you make it so that ppl can help.
say you want to start farming mats in the world.
Go to a place where you can make a contract whit a player to help you carry your mats for you. and bring them to the bank (only deposit) for you and lets say that player is on a very fast mount. ore have a roge stand by to defend you. slow crippel stun the ppl that want to gank you. so you can get away. ore a tank how wil protect you til you can get to a citty and maby take your items if you die befor the enemy dos.
ore a mage to freez your oponents and turn them in to a ice pick. and if it is realy valiubel goods you can hire a smal groep.
maby you can make like boxes you can hide in som place that are hard to find for other ppl. and have a player pick them up.
that way you can save som items and if you are getting kild you dont lose to much. and it also makes you interact whit other ppl. but the ppl that help can stil be gankt so it is not full proef.
but there needs to be a very easy way for ppl to help and to ask for help.
Yes, please look for that as the other source is not clear either and I am curious.
Most people don't like risks. If you put the risk on the Fisher's side, then they will not Fish.
Seriously, I most encourage everyone to think of this primarily for fisherpeople, not the standard 'roaming gatherer', because it shows off the problems a bit better.
I also don't believe that the Alphas, even persistent, will be a good testbed for this. Discounting the fact that character investment is lower and therefore becoming corrupted is more likely, there simply aren't as many players, and probability matters for this sort of thing a lot, as does world size and 'entrenchment'.
At least it's easy to patrol a river/coastline to protect fisherfolk.
Exactly! PVP is an easy griefing tool that disrupts gameplay for everyone who doesn’t want to participate, as well as makes it less fun and engaging for a PVPer to be met with fleeing on sight.
As it stands PVPers have everything to gain, while skillers have everything to lose. Including time, and resources, on top of frustration.
MMORPGS can survive without PVP (which I’m not suggesting, just merely stating.) But MMORPGS cannot exist without gathers/crafters. They’re too central to the economy.
At the very least gatherers should have a higher chance of escaping than being killed. The difficulty and challenge needs to be placed on those wanting to kill other players, not the gatherers.
if fishermen will not fish, price will surge. Then somebody will eventually start fishing.
I am sure there are some fishermen who can also PvP and hate competition from other artisans.
Maybe this mantra starts to fade and they need more players, more servers?
Or why gatherers are supposed to be players who are weak and unskilled at fight?
That is also in contradiction with
Why now after 7 years they feel that the corruption and the bounty hunters might not be a good enough police, to protect gatherers?
They can add NPC guards to protect resource rich areas.
Then caravans will transport resources too back to nodes, not only processed materials between nodes.
But who will defend caravans?
What if every PvP-er will want to loot caravans?
Because is "a very juicy loot-pinata"?
You are wrong. Gatherers can be NPCs too. That activity is a mindless grind easy to script anyway, hence so many bots can do that. Is not like PvP-ers are a different species who cannot gather. Is just that they don't want to do repetitive grinding tasks.
The video I am linking to now isn't the one I originally saw, but it was easy enough to find since it was linked from the wiki. They basically confirm that mounts and pets are an extension or surrogate of the player and follow normal flagging rules. They don't specifically say the word corruption unfortunately, it's only implied in this clip. As for the other video, I dunno. It might have been one of their many interviews. It starts at 44:12.
I don't fish for money, I fish to fish. When I'm fishing, it's because that's a point in time where I'm not off PvPing. For a reason, presumably. Moods shift.
You could take this as saying I don't want to ever be ganked while fishing, but that's not exactly true. It's just a thing that happens. It's annoying, but so it goes. But if most of the risk is on the fisher, and little on the attacker, I'm going to get ganked OFTEN. So I just won't fish.
It's not that there won't be fish on the market. It's that you're decreasing the amount of fishers, and raising the "entry level price-point" for fish sales. This is fine as an economics thing. It's less fine as a "people who like to fish getting to play that part of the game" thing.
I understand that you like fishing.
Can you please throw the fish you catch back into the sea?
That will make you a fisherman for pleasure, not for greed.
Also use your low level alt. Corruption will protect better.
The way games have designed harvesting of certain resources is the main issue. Its the "norm" and makes absolutely no sense to have a magical unlimited space weight reduction bag to carry your house in plus 1000000lbs of ore. Then we are placed in a situation where we have to decide how many of the things inside that unlimited space weight reduction bag is droppable when you get killed.
In Eve Online, you at least have a ship with a certain amount of space available for storage/cargo, so it makes sense. What's the problem with emulating how certain resources should be realistically acquired in a medieval setting?
Supply lines, territory becomes more important, guards patrolling more so near nodes - further away = no guards to help, mines/logging encampments determined by the mayor of a node...caravans and supply lines should be hijacked and hurried away if you want to obtain whats inside, not destroyed and then salvage a percentage of everything in your unlimited space backpack.
That is clear enough for me. Then mcstackerson was wrong. Thanks!
Then mules can be used to transport gathered materials relatively safe on large distance too, avoiding the need for caravans.
Protecting their inventory as asked in this thread would deter caravans.
Why would a caravan driver hire 10 players to protect the caravan when each can carry 10% with a mule?
Maybe a mule will not be able to carry processed materials?
In a game where you don't need to level fishing skill to catch more interesting fish, maybe.
Also, by the nature of economy, the less people fishing and the higher the price of fish, the more likely you are to be ganked while fishing.
Especially by me.
Just in case you are unaware (don't remember if you were on the forums last time I clarified this), I am absolutely on that side. By the metrics some use, I'm one of the worst types of ganker there is. I just don't see the point in making that easier for me at the cost of inclusion.
I don't know who 'needs Gatherers to have to be able to win in PvP' or 'Needs Gatherers to be there as targets' or even 'Needs Gatherers to be my targets so they can bounty hunt me', but IF the result of any decision is 'nah I'll pass' unnecessarily in my opinion, I'm gonna shout about it, because the only thing worse than a PvPvE game that compromises its values is one that shrivels down too fast to have value at all.
So as the exact person who is looking for opportunities to rise out of the water on an Aquatic Mount and kill someone while they are in the middle of catching a fish, I don't want that person's response to be 'nah I'm just done' if I keep winning.
My attackers don't know I'm playing catch & release. I'll get killed just as often, take the XP Debt just as often, and get nothing in return but a trip back from some spawnpoint every damn time.
My alt can't get to the places with the interesting fish.
Easy fish get boring fast. Interesting/challenging fish tend to be the high level ones (and therefore most valuable to gankers), and they tend to be found in harder to reach places.
The solo player should be in a guild.
The guild can be a large guild up to 300 players.
That guild can be in an alliance too with up to 3 other guilds.
A player cannot attack another player in his own guild
Also if I understand correctly citizens of the same node can also not attack each other.
Until there is a war
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Guilds#Affiliations
I don't know what you mean by
Gatherers will mostly be solo because resource nodes aren't shared.
How can resource nodes not be shared?
Wiki states: A tree is a one-time gatherable. But there are many trees, isn't it?
Also that mithril vein seems to be available for everybody who goes there and mines it.
Of course rare resources will deplete fast, maybe even in one mouse click.
But then, you run fast to the nearby node with it, not stay and fish a bit more because the mood hits you.
How the basics of it could work, Obviously the maths would change based on how high resources stacks/how much is actually gathered in game.
All players as standard are worth 25 loot points and can loot 25 points.
Resources, Stack size could be determined by player feedback :
stack/singular Legendary resource - 10 loot points
stack of rare resources - 8 loot points
stack of uncommon - 6 loot points
stack of common - 5 loot points
Player statuses and how much they can loot/be looted:
Non-combatant (green) - Worth 25 loot points, Can loot 25 points
Combatant (purple) - worth 20 loot points, Can loot only 20 points
Corrupted (red) - Worth 30 loot points, Can loot only 15 loot points
This would incentivise a lot of different play styles and dynamics and reward fighting back, Since if you do you are now worth only 20 points instead of 25. Also want that full 25 points of loot? Then you need to stay on the edge of the battlefield and be used as almost a mule to move from body to body, But you may become a prime target of Purple/Red players.
I've taken this system based of one that exists in a game called gloria victis (not a great game, but a great system nonetheless) no death felt to heavy of a loss, but no kill ever felt unrewarding.
This whole system could also be tweaked to feedback, Want high risk areas where there's an abundance of resources? Have player loot points increase whilst in that area. Common resources to expensive to loot? Reduce the cost or stack size.
*Cross post from reddit*
You cannot be in more places at the same time. When people hear you go into a raid, they'll go fishing
You might be the perfect monster on the server. But still I bet they can make better AI than you. Just that it brings no fun for normal players. That AI could be a guard, which would fight better if Azherae is the opponent.
I feel like when you've reached the point of the discussion where you accept what I'm saying but have to solve it by making 'the hypothetical danger-me' seem like some rare unicorn that the Devs might need to counterpick...
You've made my point?
Players are not forever present.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/NPC_guards
I'm not against npc guards in nodes and other places. I'm against the suggestion NPC Guards should be where people fish and where people mine. The ores will move around and I don't feel NPC Guards should move with them. I definitely don't agree Guards would sit and protect a fishing spot because fishing spots are where ever one chooses to fish. Npc Guards are not lifeguards.
I don't know. Are you unique? If yes, you might not be important to be taken into account when considering how to balance the gatherer safety.
If there are more like you, do you like to cooperate with others like you? If all of you want to own castles and be kings and quins, then there are only five of them.
If you end up fighting each-other, then you have no time to focus on gatherers. Or if they are important, then you will protect them.
In any case the game should not implement arbitrary rules to make gatherers feel safe all the time in all places. Some nodes could be safer if the majority of players and the mayor work toward such a goal/feature, sacrificing maybe other possibilities. Then is their common decision and cooperation which brings that state. And can be destroyed by a siege if they cannot defend the node.
Also some players might like fighting against you just because you can do what you do. The game should allow you this freedom to cause others to react to your actions.
I feel like I've derailed something somehow, so I'll disengage here.
Before I jumped in, you were at the point of discussing whether or not the attacker suffers as much risk as the Gatherer, and if you prefer to discard 'Fishing' (which I introduced as a concept of a form of Gathering that is not simple, but doesn't allow a ton of freedom of position in most games), then do so relative to your points.
@Nerror
i completely agree with this point, thats how it is going to play out.
This wasnt a problem in Lineage, as the exp penalty incurred threw you back dozens of hours of grinding mobs. This isn't the case here.
Which is, why I have been advocating from the beginning, that they should go with gear not being dropped, but being destroyed. That way, there actually is incentive not to be killed by Allies, as the most valuable thing (your gear) might be lost upon death. (It would also serve as an effective item sink keeping the economy moving, which is beside the point).
With that being said, hunting gatherers in groups shouldnt be a good time investment for anything but the highest/second highest tier of resources in the first place and those shouldnt be farmed solo for security reasons imo, which should somewhat mitigate gank squads.
Yes, fishing is an uncomfortable occupation
If players like to fish, it would be a pity to not have that. And you should get your satisfaction in game too.
The OP asks for "alternative play loops that provide ways to mitigate the risk of dropping gathered materials"
By that, I understand that if some value is 50%, it can be changed to 75% or to 25% by doing some effort.
Probably is better if players can grind to increase security than giving up on playing the game.
It just should not allow complete safety.
I feel that's situational and depends how they allow players to develop a particular area and its proximity to a node. Makes sense to see npc guards when really close to a node, or maybe the mine is within a node, but it seems less likely the further away you go.
Yep, I think this change is needed too.