So let assume that player has 1 main backpack and standard equipment like:
1. some armor
2. some plate legs
3. some helmet or a hat whatever
4. weapon
5. shield
6. boots
7. 2 rings
8. amulet
In my opinion player who has died in pvp or pve should drop certain items at % chance:
100% chance that player will loose his main backpack
Better increase the chance based on tier.
Drop legendary and high tier first
September 12. 2022: Being naked can also be used to bring a skilled artisan to different freeholds... Don't summon family!
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ThedeadnightMember, Phoenix Initiative, Avatar of the Phoenix, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I think there should be an optional "buff" that can be enabled/disabled to alter the chance of specific items dropping related to your profession. So if you are a low level plant gatherer you could enable the option to reduce the chance of you dropping plants by 5%, if you were max level make it like 25%. Nothing to adjust how much you drop or if you drop something, only effecting what is dropped.
The biggest opportunity for me in gathering to make it more enjoyable (and take the pain associated with getting ganked while gathering) is allowing players to play the content they enjoy and gather at the same time.
If you like running pve content like dungeons or grinding, make mobs you kill to be harvested and for a good amount of resources to spawn in dungeons.
For explorers, allow nodes to build up taps (amount of resources) based on how long they sit untouched so explorers may find rewards for finding far out of the way places.
The benefits to this are that it being woven into gameplay makes me feel like it is more a part of my identity and less a side choice or chore content loop. Yes, some people enjoy just harvesting for the sake of it and I'm not saying eliminating farming the world. I am just saying build it out more for a wider audience.
The only other critical component is the audio and visual quality of resource nodes and them being interesting (and have a theme in aesthetic and sound) feels really good. The newest example I think of is New World (for all that game's faults the nodes singularly and jointly were amazing in composition.) The quality of the experience would mitigate the pain around pvp.
Sorry for my poor English.
I read this topic and some information about the game and started to wonder what the game should look like and what the player's profile is.
From what I've read, the best way to collect resources will be like this:
1. Find a place with resources
2. Kill and loot all resource harvesters
3. Log the green character in the second account
4. Give all the loot to the green character
5. Take the green character to a safe place
6. Meet your green or purple friends or alt
7. Give him all your equipment
8. Get killed enough times to stop being red
9. Receive your inventory
Effect:
Complete success. You have a lot of materials, you have good equipment, you are green or purple + you have gold from the rewards.
I understand that a lot of people want safe pvp and it's fun for them to kill someone who has no chance of winning, but for very few people it's fun to keep dying and losing things. The pvp player should fight another pvp player. Attacking gatherers shows that either the attacker is a coward or has no interesting combat activity. So this whole discussion, in my opinion, is a failure of the game design.
Personally, I would have solved it straightforwardly. During pvp in the world, the green player does not lose any items on death. Purple loses some and red loses everything. That way, people who don't want to fight won't have to fear fighting. At the same time, it will be possible to chase each player away from a given place.
I will answer the most common statements right away.
Stop complaining and learn to fight - 20 years ago, when I had a boring life, pvp in the game was interesting for me. Now I have pvp at work every day and fighting in the game is rather boring for me. Since I am collecting materials, it means that I want to relax. If I want to fight, I will fight for caravans or guild wars. Besides, the collector is always in a worse situation than the fighting character.
Collecting should not be safe - collecting in the world takes a long time and is not safe. You can always die from an NPC.
Hire a security guard - collector security is boring and you have to pay a lot for a boring job. If collectors have to pay for protection, everything will be more expensive for what buyers will pay.
This will make it easier for bots - bots are a game developers' problem, not mine.
AoC is not for you. Find another game - It may not be for me, but who is the game for? If you want a huge empty world, that's fine. The game is going in the right direction. If most of the items are to be created by players and there is a lot of pvp, the game needs a lot of people, including people for whom combat is not the most important thing
Sorry for my poor English.
I read this topic and some information about the game and started to wonder what the game should look like and what the player's profile is.
From what I've read, the best way to collect resources will be like this:
1. Find a place with resources
2. Kill and loot all resource harvesters
3. Log the green character in the second account
4. Give all the loot to the green character
5. Take the green character to a safe place
6. Meet your green or purple friends or alt
7. Give him all your equipment
8. Get killed enough times to stop being red
9. Receive your inventory
Effect:
Complete success. You have a lot of materials, you have good equipment, you are green or purple + you have gold from the rewards.
This does not work because the corrupted character cannot trade.
However, if you change your point #2 and #3 to 'log in the green character whenever you make a kill to loot the ashes and then log back out', it is possible.
I'm telling you this, so that your points are not ignored entirely and you can decide if it still seems like a realistic method, if you consider the change I mentioned.
How about increasing the time to kill if the crafter doesn't fight back or is attacked by more than one player... that would give both parties time to reconsider their decisions ... the crafter might then run for safety or come back with his mates...
[Fleo Verum] Carolus Dynamicus - Py'rai - Rogue+Fighter
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easyMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
love gank pve n00bz and take their loot ! yes sir full flat t4 and 350 t3 logs mmm yummy 😋😋😋😋🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤
Sorry for my poor English.
I read this topic and some information about the game and started to wonder what the game should look like and what the player's profile is.
From what I've read, the best way to collect resources will be like this:
1. Find a place with resources
2. Kill and loot all resource harvesters
3. Log the green character in the second account
4. Give all the loot to the green character
5. Take the green character to a safe place
6. Meet your green or purple friends or alt
7. Give him all your equipment
8. Get killed enough times to stop being red
9. Receive your inventory
Effect:
Complete success. You have a lot of materials, you have good equipment, you are green or purple + you have gold from the rewards.
This does not work because the corrupted character cannot trade.
However, if you change your point #2 and #3 to 'log in the green character whenever you make a kill to loot the ashes and then log back out', it is possible.
I'm telling you this, so that your points are not ignored entirely and you can decide if it still seems like a realistic method, if you consider the change I mentioned.
Also lets not forget you gain exp debt on death meaning that dying a bunch to clear corruption might not be a great solution.
Even though i love pvp, i believe gatherers in the main continents shouldn't lose their gathered materials, because most people do gathering to relax, and it can be very stressful to have to constantly watch out for gankers. Also dropping materials on death would make it harder for people to socialize, since even your fellow gatherers would try to kill you if they see you gathering a rare material. That being said, what i believe would be the best option here is to make the isles on the edges of the map the best gathering spots on the world, fill them with abundant and rare materials, but also make them a full pvp zone, where if you die, you lose all your materials. This would incentivize open sea pvp, because you have to take those materials back to the main continents, and would also make the outer islands more relevant and interesting.
This is going to be semi off/on topic.
On paper the current system that has been talked about sounds fine to me.
The only thing I would like to maybe see more focus on is maybe a contract system for hiring players as bodyguards. Something like drawing up a contract and payment on job completion, with a lesser payment if you die during the time period.
Alternatively or also a node forum board, something that can have messages posted by players for everyone in the node to see at the location (probably restricted to one post per player/online to keep it from being spammed and overfilled) This would allow for job postings like hiring for things or looking for groups, etc, as well as contain lists of players who are neerdowells who renege on payments or backstab. This would also potentially alleviate some of the sitting around spamming chat with looking for help messages and being forced to do so repeatedly as you get drowned out by others doing the same.
I know these things can be done regardless of having systems in place for it, but so can caravans technically as well by having each player instead of defending, hauling loot instead.
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easyMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
a lot of "Member" only ppl supporting carebear mechanics. wow I am extremely surprised people with 0 skin in the game are scared not only irl but ingame too. fascinating ................................................
It's all going to be about the balance. If the punishment for killing an innocent gatherer is higher than the reward, it will not happen often - but I think the fact that it still could happen makes the game more exciting.
Personally I will not participate in much PvP content outside of node battles and caravans, and I will likely be artisan and PvE focused player, only participating in PvP when absolutely necessary. I am however very excited about the risk vs reward aspect of Ashes. There's something really exciting about the possibility of getting killed while doing some type of gathering and losing some of your materials - especially if it's an unlikely but possible scenario.
If it's too likely (e.g. the reward is great enough for them to justify it) then it becomes stressful. If it's unlikely but still possible, that's the sweet spot. I can't feel completely secure but I'm not super paranoid either.
I think it would also help to have craftable consumables that are somewhat rare or high-value, that can either reduce the percentage of materials lost (or eliminate entirely), or even make a player invisible to others in terms of PvP... that would be an all-win scenario - if the gatherer just wants to chill and not worry about things, they gotta pay to get the item. It boosts the economy and the value of certain types of crafters that are able to make the product, and the griefer doesn't even know they exist and will target someone else, or they get griefed themselves when no items drop and now they have corruption.
It becomes a luxury, and that's how it should be. I'm cheap and don't want to pay a crafter for that item, then I have to accept the risks involved. More options are always better than less in this style of game, but the gatherer needs to give something up for that luxury.
I see a lot of people talk about the risk vs reward thing, or how it won't be cool enough if you don't get to loot gatherers but to me the most important thing being lost for a gatherer is time.
Being killed is annoying depending on how much time it takes to get back to gathering but if you also lose 50% or 25% of your stuff you effectively also lose that much time. Say I go out and it takes me an hour to gather 1000 Iron ore, and someone kills me as I walk away from the mine/area and takes 50%. Not only did I lose 500 Iron ore, I lost half an hour of time and will need to spend that again to get back the 500 Iron ore.
So go back more often and be safe you say. Let's say I go back every time I have 250 Ore, and say walking back to the node takes as little as three minutes. That's 6 minutes per 250 Ore, or 30 Minutes for 1000. Extra time lost just to gather basic materials.
And this risk isn't there for attackers, they can just circle an area where gatherers are and pick off those they find, a 30 sec fight to loot half an hour worth of gathering materials with barely any risk, and they can keep that pace up going between different material gatherers.
Why would I gather materials, if I can just kill people for it? Even better with higher level materials, I don't need to spend any skill in being a gatherer, I can just hunt the gatherers instead.
I don't mind dying, I don't mind running back out to the gathering area, I don't mind us fighting over a good area or rare material/spawn. But I do mind being a loot piñata for PVP'ers who lose no time invested if they get killed and get a ton of reward if they kill the gatherer.
If going out to gather is risking me to lose the time I have for an evening of play because I lose such a large portion of my stuff / time; then why bother at all?
- as someone with a full time job looking for a game to spend a lot of time in, if a majority of that time will be lost to being ganked for wanting to go into professions, I won't gather. I will be part of the group hunting them instead. It seems much more profitable and doesn't risk losing all of my time.
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.
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.
I see a lot of people talk about the risk vs reward thing, or how it won't be cool enough if you don't get to loot gatherers but to me the most important thing being lost for a gatherer is time.
Being killed is annoying depending on how much time it takes to get back to gathering but if you also lose 50% or 25% of your stuff you effectively also lose that much time. Say I go out and it takes me an hour to gather 1000 Iron ore, and someone kills me as I walk away from the mine/area and takes 50%. Not only did I lose 500 Iron ore, I lost half an hour of time and will need to spend that again to get back the 500 Iron ore.
So go back more often and be safe you say. Let's say I go back every time I have 250 Ore, and say walking back to the node takes as little as three minutes. That's 6 minutes per 250 Ore, or 30 Minutes for 1000. Extra time lost just to gather basic materials.
And this risk isn't there for attackers, they can just circle an area where gatherers are and pick off those they find, a 30 sec fight to loot half an hour worth of gathering materials with barely any risk, and they can keep that pace up going between different material gatherers.
Why would I gather materials, if I can just kill people for it? Even better with higher level materials, I don't need to spend any skill in being a gatherer, I can just hunt the gatherers instead.
I don't mind dying, I don't mind running back out to the gathering area, I don't mind us fighting over a good area or rare material/spawn. But I do mind being a loot piñata for PVP'ers who lose no time invested if they get killed and get a ton of reward if they kill the gatherer.
If going out to gather is risking me to lose the time I have for an evening of play because I lose such a large portion of my stuff / time; then why bother at all?
- as someone with a full time job looking for a game to spend a lot of time in, if a majority of that time will be lost to being ganked for wanting to go into professions, I won't gather. I will be part of the group hunting them instead. It seems much more profitable and doesn't risk losing all of my time.
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.
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.
I’m not wrong nor did you provide anything to prove I was. No one wants bots, especially Steven. Some people like monotony and repetitive tasks. The pvper your describing is the exact one that everyone hates to meet. They’re too lazy nor want to complete things they deem boring so that grief, attack, and harass those that have what they want.
Which literally goes to show gathers have nothing to gain and everything to lose in these scenarios. At best they win and get whatever mid tier gear the pvper is was wearing because they want rewarded not risk, they’re not going wear legendary gear or something they had to grind for to PVP in. And the PVPers gets rare materials they most likely don’t even have the stats/skills to earn themselves. It’s the most toxic scenario in gaming. Rewarding bullies and trolls without fail safes or incentives for victims is the easiest way to kill a game.
I also hate when a PvP-er attacks a passive player. In that scenario I hate both of them.
If the gatherer fights back, I would join to help him even if chances are high to die with him.
If the gatherer doesn't fight back, I'll try to figure out if that was a bot.
But I don't want the game to bring safety and reward boring activities and players feel entitled to have that safety and calling themselves hard working people who sustain the MMO.
I've seen those kind of MMOs. No danger at all. Even drops are guaranteed. You see a resource vein, you gather it, it vanishes for you, but the next player gathers it too, then others come and everybody has a piece.
Same with fishing, you see the fishing spot, the game guarantees you get your share of fish according to your fishing skill.
But here in AoC, you might have to fight with another fisherman for the fishing spot. Is he a gatherer or a PvP-er if he attacks first?
How can I know when I pass by, whom to help in the fight?
Of course if any of them is my citizen that gets my help.
And citizens might not be able to gank each-other but I am not 100% sure. Wiki could be more clear about it.
This is a much better approach, and I respect and appreciate your view on the subject much more after having expanding upon it. Thanks for sharing, friend.
I’m really glad to see this is a dev discussion! I love gathering and I love PvP!!
Artisan gatherers will be prime targets for combatant players. With that said, would you like to see alternative play loops that provide you with a way to mitigate the risk of dropping gathered materials?
The risk of dropping items should always be there. IF I’m successful in defending myself and killing my attacker OR another player helps to defend me, the attacker is gonna risk dropping materials too. What I dislike is being stuck in gathering gear when being attacked. I understand having artisan gear set in freeholds/towns but when you are out in the world it doesn’t make sense. If you are out exploring a world full of mystery and danger….I don’t wanna die like the classic botanist in alien movies that should know better than to poke an unknown plant after taking off his helmet.
I like the idea of being able to craft “sturdier” bags that could reduce the amount you can drop or something along those lines. Perhaps other artisan trees can craft a range of items that have similar effects whether it’s a consumable or wearable item. Could utility items exist that you could set-up/throw around where you gather to weaken incoming combatants?
I still like the idea of minimizing the risk by choosing to carry small amounts rather than opting for a mule or caravan. I think Mayors should be able to unlock in-node allotments and farms for different types of resources for citizens to gather. Being able to gather resources from dungeons/raids when you are already in a group is also a fun activity to do as a team~
I really look forward to the cluster gathering. I hope this will give me and other gatherers a meaningful reason to party. We could gather, protect and profit together! (sometimes we might loose a portion of materials but at least we will have fun!)
Whatever the outcome everyone seems to want some kind of risk vs reward situation.
The main divide is between those who do not want any kind of safe zones and those who prefer
if certain areas had the option to mitigate what a player could potentially "take" from another
player should they wish to engage in PvP.
Another point of concern is the fact that AoC was advertised to be quite in favour of open world PvP and also the reason many people are invested in this game, some are worried that shifting towards the traditional theme park MMO will turn AoC into another generic MMO.
The majority of our players agreed that offering a high sec and low sec zone option (like EVE Online) or making it so higher rarity resources have a much higher chanced to be dropped upon death (with lower rarity having a greatly decreased chance) would be a happy compromise for more hardcore and casual players as well as tying into the risk versus reward system you saw with Trade Packs and ArcheAge. Otherwise you risk scaring off more casual players which isn't good for server longevity.
How PVP relates to PVE
As someone who is not mainly a PVPer, I've always felt that the only way to effectively combine PVP and PVE activities is if the PVP aspect makes PVE-activities(which includes gathering) more exciting.
If I cannot be attacked or lose anything while gathering, that is not exciting.
If I get attacked every single time I try to gather, that isn't really exciting either. It has entered the territory of frustration/boring instead.
Losing 25%, 50% or even 100% of a gathering run is no biggie, if it happens once in every 10, 20 or 40 runs.
But if it happens every time, or maybe multiple times each run? Yeah, that's probably not gonna fly for a significant amount of potential players.
So, as some others have already pointed out, it's much more important to discuss the risk/cost for the people that does the PKing, than to discuss the amount dropped when they do kill someone.
Murder-hobo's
Also, while it might be a personal preference, I'm much more okay with someone killing me for the recources I carry, than because they are bored. Because if they do it for my resources, they are driven by an ingame reason for it. Whereas if they do it because they are bored, they are pretty much just a murder-hobo...
If we can make sure that most PK's are done with an ingame motivated Return of Investment, it automatically means that the risk you take as a gatherer is in relation to the value of the stuff you decide to gather. Which ties in nicely with the risk vs reward theme.
(If the game ends up with a lot of murder-hobos, ingame systems will have very limited ability to affect their behavior, short of making it "not possible" for them to do certain things.)
"Mitigation"
As, yet again, others have already pointed out, mitigation doesnt need to happen on the drops. A few examples of other ways to "mitigate" below:
It could instead be related to the ability to get away once attacked. Like a non-combat only utility skill with a long cooldown that makes you immune to CC for 10 seconds and gives 50% movement speed for 30 seconds.
Or by formalizing guardian contracts, either by some kind of escrow or toggleable immediate resource sharing from harvesting to party-members.
Or you could try to trick the social interactions between players. Like having an noticably increased yield when in a party, enticing two gatheres who meet to group up rather than fighting. Which both gives them one less PVP-moment, and gives the next PKer 2 people to worry about instead of just one.
Localized non-corruption-based bounties could mean that someone persistently hunting farmers in an area could eventually reach a point where it's just not safe for them to be in the area.
This thread already has some other interesting options, and will likely gain even more as it plays out
In my opinion, there's a big problem with the "bandit/worker" mechanic in ashes, being a bandit seems productive and not inconvenient at all, first, in caravans there's no downside to being a bandit except for som reputation in a bandits guild that Steven mentioned once I think, and second, in the open world, lets be real, almost no one is gonna just stand there while another player try to kill them for the corruption system to kick in.
I understand that the current system design is the way it is to encourage a healthy ammount of pvp, but as it stands right now, being and bandit seems more profitable and fun than gathering and crafting on your own, besides the corruption system, there's no risk a bandit takes that the worker is not already taking, which is death penalty, and I don't think I need to explain why this is problematic.
In my opinion to make the system fair and match equal ammount of risk vs reward in both sides there are 2 solutions:
1: Changing the corruption system, any color player that atacks a green player, should turn red wether the gren player fights back or not, at the same time even if the green player chooses to fight back, they should stay green, so the the bandit gets that juicy ammount of loot that green players drop upon dead.
2: Leaving the corruption system as is, but making it coexist aloside a crime system, where the bandit that attacks a green player incurs in the risk of actually losing the fight and being marked as a bounty, being killed as a bounty should make you drop all your materials, and give you an high respawn timer, because there's no worst punishment than wasting time ofcourse.
Personally I like solution 2 better, sin it can be inplemented alongside the caravan system, which lacks risks on the bandit side as of now, where players would become bounties if they were to fail the attack, this would also create a more active bounty hunting scene compared to what we would have with the corruption system alone.
In general, I like the system as it is, but I am also not against certain types of mitigation as long as there is still risk. And as long as the rewards are also reduced. I see this mitigation as reducing the risk/rewards from 100%/100% to e.g. 50%/50%. For example you reduce the drop rate on death by 50% but also reduce the gathering speed by 50%. So in the end you reduce the risk of loosing stuff by 50%, but to get the same amount as before you have to gather twice as long with the additional risk of getting ganked effectively doubled.
My main problem is with gatherers being killed repeatedly. If you get killed 4x, you only keep about 6 of your 100 iron with a 50% drop rate. I would propose to make a certain percentage (e.g. 50%) of the iron you keep after being killed safe. So for example, you get killed and loose 50 iron, but from the remaining 50, 25 are now safe. So on your next death you loose only 12 and 25+6 are now safe. And so on and so forth. This way you still have the risk, but multiple deaths (spawn camping) do not leave you with basically nothing. This, of course, would only happen for PvP deaths.
Apart from that I also think that the risk/reward balance for the ganker is not really there. Maybe the amount of resources obtained from PvP should be visible in some way to make the ganking PvP player a juicier target. Because right now, a ganker knows they will most likely get resouces if they kill a player that they see gathering. But the fellow ganker that already looted a bunch of gatheres and carries a ton of mats is not really identifiable as such (if they are not already red).
cough cough cough
heary heary
i have the answer and thas answer is cursed as i am
hear the answer and despair as i heard it and laugh with madness
they answer is escort quests.
so basically the party of gatherers could put up an escort quest.
-something like a banner or something similar or a caravan that other people can join in and guard the gatherers until they collect set amount of the material like 100 out of 100 special wood or per person.
-the gatherers would have to set some of there gold and materials as a reward for the guard. People that participate split it up between there party members. if the gatherers die mission fails and guard get gold/rewards based on whatever percentage of the good and or gatherers are left.
-this could be a thing that can be put up from town or by guild to put up as a service or as request mission/quest could be payed by guild or by town's taxes and upgraded or something by one or the another
got the idea while thinking of eve online contract or how they are called
heary heary
fear the creeping doom of content
and drop a coin for the subscription.
This could be a special inventory/backpack slot/s for very precious materials which the player don't wanna lose. The attacker will still get his loot, but not the one in the HIDDEN POCKET. He wouldn't know what is in there anyway. The HIDDEN POCKET can have one, or just few slots and may get bigger with the mastery level. The HIDDEN POCKET should not be big, but large enough to make sense. Let say the pocket starts with one slot, then could expand to 3 and be capped at 5 or 7. Some testing would be needed to find the most useful number of slots for everyone.
Some regulations may exist. For instance - certain materials can't be put in the HIDDEN POCKET, or only one item or one stack of items for a certain type of potential loot can be there, or a certain cap for the stack of items.
The system with the HIDDEN POCKET can always be adjusted so that it doesn't destroy either crafting or PvP. Lets not forget: player looting is not the only incentive for open world PvP. Rivalries between guilds/clans, defending/invading territory, a town, the caravans. There could be events, arenas, battlegrounds, sabotages, spying and counter spying, achievements, titles. There is so much more that motivates players to do PvP. The loot is just one small aspect. So, the HIDDEN POCKET would not be a big issue that would destroy open world PvP ... in my view.
So they removed the word "eliminate" from the original question and said they're not introducing changes to their core pillars of gameplay. How that word even got there in the first place is quite the mystery. I don't think it was accidental. Especially when whoever runs their twitter account was entertaining the idea of safe zones on the same day.
I think this was a shot across the bow of the ship, a warning. For the first time since I've been following this game, Intrepid has floated an idea that would destroy and/or trivialize core philosophies of their own game. Was it an accident? Maybe so, anything's possible. Hell of an "accident" though. Speak up people, it doesn't stop here, it never does.
And it'll only get worse as time goes on. As the early investors become a smaller total percentage, we'll be more easily thrown aside and disregarded. Not saying that's how it will be, but I definitely see the risk of it.
Almost no one who is a serious fan of Ashes wants a game where "gatherers" are fish in a barrel just waiting to be killed. We're counting on you Intrepid to design the game to where that is minimized to some extent.
- Dynamic as opposed to static resource node spawn. So players are moving, looking for resource nodes, not all just standing around like fish in a barrel in a small area waiting to be killed.
- Map/terrain design in general. Cover/hiding spots, multiple escape routes, a focus on not trapping people in areas, as fish in a barrel are trapped.
- Mount skills/Mounting speed. If you see mounted players on the horizon coming at you, and the time it takes you to call up your own mount is longer than it takes for them to close on you, you have a problem. It's not rocket surgery, that's bad design. Instead of giving me buttons to press that say "DERP I mitigate and eliminate my loot loss," give me TOOLS TO DO IT MYSELF. Mounts that are faster, that I choose to use for gathering in more hotly contested areas. Maybe mounts that can jump or something, like a deer or a ram that has a unique jumping skill that can be used to great effect in certain areas of the map. Obviously class skills, cc's and whatnot. Maybe consumables like a potion, speed boosts, use your imagination, possibilities are endless of things that can be thought up. Give us tools, not HERP DERP buttons. Exciting and emergent gameplay.
- Nodes/node loyalty. We're counting on you Intrepid to make the node system do what you've been saying it's supposed to do. Where we're not all just a bunch of wild animals thrown into a FFA pvp game. Community, node loyalty, the friendships, alliances and bonds that develop, these are things we are expecting you to incentivize and foster with the system's design. The average player should be motivated to become a member of these communities and receive the relative security therein, of living in a "home area," including friendly or allied nodes nearby. The average player should want to be a part of these communities, not just their own immediate circle of friends, where everyone who's not their friend is someone to kill.
- And finally the corruption system. We're counting on you Intrepid to get it right, to allow for some amount of fuckery to go on, but put a meaningful check on the excesses of griefing.
This notion of "gatherers." Gatherers will include pvp focused players and non pvp focused players. They are not this monolithic group of helpless, clueless players that need special protections, like some people have insinuated in this thread. In Ashes, they're just players. There will be hardcore pvpers that choose gathering. There will be pve focused players who don't choose gathering, they choose something else. And vice versa. Really not seeing the connection some people are making there.
Edit: Oh yeah, the Escape from Tarkov gamma case idea. EFT is full loot. When you die, you lose everything on your character except for what is in the gamma case.
In Ashes, your ENTIRE CHARACTER is a gigantic gamma case already. You lose almost nothing when you die. A portion of your gatherables. Your armor, weapons, accessories, consumables, tools, mounts, backpacks, you name it, all stays with you. Just an estimation, but probably around 95%+ of the value on your character all stays with you when you die. No chance of losing it.
So they removed the word "eliminate" from the original question ...
Indeed, the original question was Artisan gatherers will be prime targets for combatant players. With that said, would you like to see alternative play loops that provide you with a way to mitigate or eliminate the risk of dropping gathered materials?
September 12. 2022: Being naked can also be used to bring a skilled artisan to different freeholds... Don't summon family!
Especially when whoever runs their twitter account was entertaining the idea of safe zones on the same day.
I think safe zones near resources wouldn't hurt. The weak link in the resource flow should be the caravan.
But those are more expensive and risky, compared to mules.
Therefore mules should be safe only on the shortest path from resource to the closest city.
September 12. 2022: Being naked can also be used to bring a skilled artisan to different freeholds... Don't summon family!
Sorry but a lot of you guys missing the point here.
First of all, all of the post are talking about a "solo guy who gather solo on his side"
Well MMORPG dont work like that. its a community game, so if you go solo and get gank, maybe the good solution is to not go back solo? and play with community? you know? in a MMORPG, where there is a tons of players..
Second, Y'all talking as well as "loss time"
what a poor vision..
You never experienced something not that good that at the end was hell of a story who bring you back good memories ? Fun isn't fun if there is only fun. its like JOY or SHADOW, it can't exist if there is no SAD or LIGHT.
You never learned that it's not the destination that matters but the walk?
Are you only a material guy? the only thing you care about is what you gather, really ?
What about the story it create? You prefer playing solo, not get ganked and encounter NO risk at all? Really?
Dont you want to "experience" something a bit more "alive"?
Its really sad to see all your comments saying "well i dont want to lose my stuff"
Man its the game.. and its not "time loss" its playing a game where you will have a real story to tell and to experience.
I sincerely hope some of you understand that.
Ah yeah, the "it's a group game, play with friends" so called solution. There are many reasons to play solo and many of them are not because the person doesn't want to play with others.
- You can only log for a short time (say less than 1 hour) and the time to form a group would eat too much of that short session to have your friends leave what they were doing and everyone to move to the same location (no fast travel in AoC).
- The main event with your guild is done/over and everyone is logging off, but you can stay online for 30-40 minutes.
- You arrive early before the main event and you have time to kill while the rest show up where you're supposed to meet.
- You're moving to a different location to meet people.
- ...
Gathering in these situations is a perfect activity. If gathering solo for a little while is too dangerous or risky, why even bother? Even the few full time soloers contribute to the community when their gathered resources enter the economy. If been seen mining or cutting lumbers attract too many vultures, why bother?
But what's important here is that to lack organic risk for gatherers, processors, crafters, and traders is to undermine much of the premises and work of Ashes of Creation.
It undermines the entire game.
Lack of organic risk..? Even if they didn't drop resources, every gatherers, processors and crafters are under the same risks as everyone playing. They can be killed by mobs and other players, like everyone one else. And it's not like crafting professions where classes or archetypes, everyone can level these professions. They definitely contribute more to their community them the ones not leveling any profession. Killers that take and don't produce anything are parasites.
Gathered materials, processed ones and finish goods is not free money. There are economic risks, maybe all the time you've spent will be lost or see little profit because the market is saturated, no one is interested in what you've made anymore because the server isn't freshly launched, and what not. Leveling a crafting profession cost you more gold than it's generate for a long time.
Lack or organic risk...
I don't think Gold should exist either. Would you stop playing because you can't play like you've played every other game and dont' know how that works out? Cut Metal Discs? Ingots? Trade Gathering Rights?
You're making a lot of assumptions about how terrible trading will be but the game isn't just about trading. It's Civ vs Civ, PvP, PvE, and figuring out how to excel in that environment is part of the game.
You talk about parasites but. . . you know what a PvP game is right? It doesn't suddenly become an aweful immoral crime when you introduce Resources into the game.
You can choose to go to a Civ Node that supports you, in the end. You have plenty of options.
Pasting this from Reddit when I responded to the prompt a few days ago, back when everyone was arguing about no mat drop and full inventory drop.
Give certain node types (I'm guessing merchant) the ability to build drop boxes for gatherers. The Dropbox would be communal and be attackable.
If destroyed, the Dropbox would have a lower drop rate than if you are carrying it, so its appealing for gatherers. Because it's communal, attackers would have larger incentive to attack the dripbox because it could contain the material for multiple gatherers. This would also incentives the gatherers utilizing it to band together to defend it.
At the end of the gathering session, the player could either set up a caravan to bring everyone's mats back if others opt in or ferry their own mats back themselves.
This would add a system and gameplay loop that I think is in line with the core concept of Risk vs Reward in AoC
I think safe zones near resources wouldn't hurt. The weak link in the resource flow should be the caravan.
But those are more expensive and risky, compared to mules.
Therefore mules should be safe only on the shortest path from resource to the closest city.
Safe zones near resources? Resources are normally all over the place in mmos. Everywhere. Dunno how you'd implement safe zones near resources if they're everywhere. That would be a massive design shift from Intrepid.
With how close nodes are to each other, in many areas of the map you're not all that far from the relative safety of a node anyway.
@pyreal
Game anchors people to an area more. Civ vs Civ [node vs node]. You're missing something in your picture. Imagine 150 people in 1 Vanilla World of Warcraft Zone, all citizens of the Civ there.
As the main draw for combatant players, it's been designed such that gatherers carry all their gathered materials on them and you get to loot some of it when they die. The time invested into killing a player who gathers is probably significantly lower than the time invested by that player doing the gathering.
If players, on the other hand, are limited in what they can physically carry, coupled with requiring a transport/caravan/whatever to haul larger resources around, then the main way to take resources would mean there needs to be some transport/caravan/whatever hijacking, then the combatant has to find a way to hijack the transport/caravan/whatever and get away without being killed.
This would mean that control over particular resources and proximity to them become more important if you want to be able to haul your items back to a safe location.
If smaller amounts of resources could only be carried, and everything you have on you could be selected as something to take, while a majority of your items are being hauled back to town via transport...and your dead body carries very little in terms of certain gatherables, then you really wont lose much, unless its gems, or herbs...smaller, less heavy items...like currency....
If you dont belong to a node, and you harvest resources from that area, you should receive reputation penalties to that node. Trespassing! Die!
Comments
Better increase the chance based on tier.
Drop legendary and high tier first
If you like running pve content like dungeons or grinding, make mobs you kill to be harvested and for a good amount of resources to spawn in dungeons.
For explorers, allow nodes to build up taps (amount of resources) based on how long they sit untouched so explorers may find rewards for finding far out of the way places.
The benefits to this are that it being woven into gameplay makes me feel like it is more a part of my identity and less a side choice or chore content loop. Yes, some people enjoy just harvesting for the sake of it and I'm not saying eliminating farming the world. I am just saying build it out more for a wider audience.
The only other critical component is the audio and visual quality of resource nodes and them being interesting (and have a theme in aesthetic and sound) feels really good. The newest example I think of is New World (for all that game's faults the nodes singularly and jointly were amazing in composition.) The quality of the experience would mitigate the pain around pvp.
I read this topic and some information about the game and started to wonder what the game should look like and what the player's profile is.
From what I've read, the best way to collect resources will be like this:
1. Find a place with resources
2. Kill and loot all resource harvesters
3. Log the green character in the second account
4. Give all the loot to the green character
5. Take the green character to a safe place
6. Meet your green or purple friends or alt
7. Give him all your equipment
8. Get killed enough times to stop being red
9. Receive your inventory
Effect:
Complete success. You have a lot of materials, you have good equipment, you are green or purple + you have gold from the rewards.
I understand that a lot of people want safe pvp and it's fun for them to kill someone who has no chance of winning, but for very few people it's fun to keep dying and losing things. The pvp player should fight another pvp player. Attacking gatherers shows that either the attacker is a coward or has no interesting combat activity. So this whole discussion, in my opinion, is a failure of the game design.
Personally, I would have solved it straightforwardly. During pvp in the world, the green player does not lose any items on death. Purple loses some and red loses everything. That way, people who don't want to fight won't have to fear fighting. At the same time, it will be possible to chase each player away from a given place.
I will answer the most common statements right away.
Stop complaining and learn to fight - 20 years ago, when I had a boring life, pvp in the game was interesting for me. Now I have pvp at work every day and fighting in the game is rather boring for me. Since I am collecting materials, it means that I want to relax. If I want to fight, I will fight for caravans or guild wars. Besides, the collector is always in a worse situation than the fighting character.
Collecting should not be safe - collecting in the world takes a long time and is not safe. You can always die from an NPC.
Hire a security guard - collector security is boring and you have to pay a lot for a boring job. If collectors have to pay for protection, everything will be more expensive for what buyers will pay.
This will make it easier for bots - bots are a game developers' problem, not mine.
AoC is not for you. Find another game - It may not be for me, but who is the game for? If you want a huge empty world, that's fine. The game is going in the right direction. If most of the items are to be created by players and there is a lot of pvp, the game needs a lot of people, including people for whom combat is not the most important thing
This does not work because the corrupted character cannot trade.
However, if you change your point #2 and #3 to 'log in the green character whenever you make a kill to loot the ashes and then log back out', it is possible.
I'm telling you this, so that your points are not ignored entirely and you can decide if it still seems like a realistic method, if you consider the change I mentioned.
Also lets not forget you gain exp debt on death meaning that dying a bunch to clear corruption might not be a great solution.
On paper the current system that has been talked about sounds fine to me.
The only thing I would like to maybe see more focus on is maybe a contract system for hiring players as bodyguards. Something like drawing up a contract and payment on job completion, with a lesser payment if you die during the time period.
Alternatively or also a node forum board, something that can have messages posted by players for everyone in the node to see at the location (probably restricted to one post per player/online to keep it from being spammed and overfilled) This would allow for job postings like hiring for things or looking for groups, etc, as well as contain lists of players who are neerdowells who renege on payments or backstab. This would also potentially alleviate some of the sitting around spamming chat with looking for help messages and being forced to do so repeatedly as you get drowned out by others doing the same.
I know these things can be done regardless of having systems in place for it, but so can caravans technically as well by having each player instead of defending, hauling loot instead.
Personally I will not participate in much PvP content outside of node battles and caravans, and I will likely be artisan and PvE focused player, only participating in PvP when absolutely necessary. I am however very excited about the risk vs reward aspect of Ashes. There's something really exciting about the possibility of getting killed while doing some type of gathering and losing some of your materials - especially if it's an unlikely but possible scenario.
If it's too likely (e.g. the reward is great enough for them to justify it) then it becomes stressful. If it's unlikely but still possible, that's the sweet spot. I can't feel completely secure but I'm not super paranoid either.
I think it would also help to have craftable consumables that are somewhat rare or high-value, that can either reduce the percentage of materials lost (or eliminate entirely), or even make a player invisible to others in terms of PvP... that would be an all-win scenario - if the gatherer just wants to chill and not worry about things, they gotta pay to get the item. It boosts the economy and the value of certain types of crafters that are able to make the product, and the griefer doesn't even know they exist and will target someone else, or they get griefed themselves when no items drop and now they have corruption.
It becomes a luxury, and that's how it should be. I'm cheap and don't want to pay a crafter for that item, then I have to accept the risks involved. More options are always better than less in this style of game, but the gatherer needs to give something up for that luxury.
This is a much better approach, and I respect and appreciate your view on the subject much more after having expanding upon it. Thanks for sharing, friend.
Artisan gatherers will be prime targets for combatant players. With that said, would you like to see alternative play loops that provide you with a way to mitigate the risk of dropping gathered materials?
The risk of dropping items should always be there. IF I’m successful in defending myself and killing my attacker OR another player helps to defend me, the attacker is gonna risk dropping materials too. What I dislike is being stuck in gathering gear when being attacked. I understand having artisan gear set in freeholds/towns but when you are out in the world it doesn’t make sense. If you are out exploring a world full of mystery and danger….I don’t wanna die like the classic botanist in alien movies that should know better than to poke an unknown plant after taking off his helmet.
I like the idea of being able to craft “sturdier” bags that could reduce the amount you can drop or something along those lines. Perhaps other artisan trees can craft a range of items that have similar effects whether it’s a consumable or wearable item. Could utility items exist that you could set-up/throw around where you gather to weaken incoming combatants?
I still like the idea of minimizing the risk by choosing to carry small amounts rather than opting for a mule or caravan. I think Mayors should be able to unlock in-node allotments and farms for different types of resources for citizens to gather. Being able to gather resources from dungeons/raids when you are already in a group is also a fun activity to do as a team~
I really look forward to the cluster gathering. I hope this will give me and other gatherers a meaningful reason to party. We could gather, protect and profit together! (sometimes we might loose a portion of materials but at least we will have fun!)
Whatever the outcome everyone seems to want some kind of risk vs reward situation.
The main divide is between those who do not want any kind of safe zones and those who prefer
if certain areas had the option to mitigate what a player could potentially "take" from another
player should they wish to engage in PvP.
Another point of concern is the fact that AoC was advertised to be quite in favour of open world PvP and also the reason many people are invested in this game, some are worried that shifting towards the traditional theme park MMO will turn AoC into another generic MMO.
The majority of our players agreed that offering a high sec and low sec zone option (like EVE Online) or making it so higher rarity resources have a much higher chanced to be dropped upon death (with lower rarity having a greatly decreased chance) would be a happy compromise for more hardcore and casual players as well as tying into the risk versus reward system you saw with Trade Packs and ArcheAge. Otherwise you risk scaring off more casual players which isn't good for server longevity.
How PVP relates to PVE
As someone who is not mainly a PVPer, I've always felt that the only way to effectively combine PVP and PVE activities is if the PVP aspect makes PVE-activities(which includes gathering) more exciting.
If I cannot be attacked or lose anything while gathering, that is not exciting.
If I get attacked every single time I try to gather, that isn't really exciting either. It has entered the territory of frustration/boring instead.
Losing 25%, 50% or even 100% of a gathering run is no biggie, if it happens once in every 10, 20 or 40 runs.
But if it happens every time, or maybe multiple times each run? Yeah, that's probably not gonna fly for a significant amount of potential players.
So, as some others have already pointed out, it's much more important to discuss the risk/cost for the people that does the PKing, than to discuss the amount dropped when they do kill someone.
Murder-hobo's
Also, while it might be a personal preference, I'm much more okay with someone killing me for the recources I carry, than because they are bored. Because if they do it for my resources, they are driven by an ingame reason for it. Whereas if they do it because they are bored, they are pretty much just a murder-hobo...
If we can make sure that most PK's are done with an ingame motivated Return of Investment, it automatically means that the risk you take as a gatherer is in relation to the value of the stuff you decide to gather. Which ties in nicely with the risk vs reward theme.
(If the game ends up with a lot of murder-hobos, ingame systems will have very limited ability to affect their behavior, short of making it "not possible" for them to do certain things.)
"Mitigation"
As, yet again, others have already pointed out, mitigation doesnt need to happen on the drops. A few examples of other ways to "mitigate" below:
- It could instead be related to the ability to get away once attacked. Like a non-combat only utility skill with a long cooldown that makes you immune to CC for 10 seconds and gives 50% movement speed for 30 seconds.
- Or by formalizing guardian contracts, either by some kind of escrow or toggleable immediate resource sharing from harvesting to party-members.
- Or you could try to trick the social interactions between players. Like having an noticably increased yield when in a party, enticing two gatheres who meet to group up rather than fighting. Which both gives them one less PVP-moment, and gives the next PKer 2 people to worry about instead of just one.
- Localized non-corruption-based bounties could mean that someone persistently hunting farmers in an area could eventually reach a point where it's just not safe for them to be in the area.
This thread already has some other interesting options, and will likely gain even more as it plays outI understand that the current system design is the way it is to encourage a healthy ammount of pvp, but as it stands right now, being and bandit seems more profitable and fun than gathering and crafting on your own, besides the corruption system, there's no risk a bandit takes that the worker is not already taking, which is death penalty, and I don't think I need to explain why this is problematic.
In my opinion to make the system fair and match equal ammount of risk vs reward in both sides there are 2 solutions:
1: Changing the corruption system, any color player that atacks a green player, should turn red wether the gren player fights back or not, at the same time even if the green player chooses to fight back, they should stay green, so the the bandit gets that juicy ammount of loot that green players drop upon dead.
2: Leaving the corruption system as is, but making it coexist aloside a crime system, where the bandit that attacks a green player incurs in the risk of actually losing the fight and being marked as a bounty, being killed as a bounty should make you drop all your materials, and give you an high respawn timer, because there's no worst punishment than wasting time ofcourse.
Personally I like solution 2 better, sin it can be inplemented alongside the caravan system, which lacks risks on the bandit side as of now, where players would become bounties if they were to fail the attack, this would also create a more active bounty hunting scene compared to what we would have with the corruption system alone.
My main problem is with gatherers being killed repeatedly. If you get killed 4x, you only keep about 6 of your 100 iron with a 50% drop rate. I would propose to make a certain percentage (e.g. 50%) of the iron you keep after being killed safe. So for example, you get killed and loose 50 iron, but from the remaining 50, 25 are now safe. So on your next death you loose only 12 and 25+6 are now safe. And so on and so forth. This way you still have the risk, but multiple deaths (spawn camping) do not leave you with basically nothing. This, of course, would only happen for PvP deaths.
Apart from that I also think that the risk/reward balance for the ganker is not really there. Maybe the amount of resources obtained from PvP should be visible in some way to make the ganking PvP player a juicier target. Because right now, a ganker knows they will most likely get resouces if they kill a player that they see gathering. But the fellow ganker that already looted a bunch of gatheres and carries a ton of mats is not really identifiable as such (if they are not already red).
heary heary
i have the answer and thas answer is cursed as i am
hear the answer and despair as i heard it and laugh with madness
they answer is escort quests.
so basically the party of gatherers could put up an escort quest.
-something like a banner or something similar or a caravan that other people can join in and guard the gatherers until they collect set amount of the material like 100 out of 100 special wood or per person.
-the gatherers would have to set some of there gold and materials as a reward for the guard. People that participate split it up between there party members. if the gatherers die mission fails and guard get gold/rewards based on whatever percentage of the good and or gatherers are left.
-this could be a thing that can be put up from town or by guild to put up as a service or as request mission/quest could be payed by guild or by town's taxes and upgraded or something by one or the another
got the idea while thinking of eve online contract or how they are called
heary heary
fear the creeping doom of content
and drop a coin for the subscription.
This could be a special inventory/backpack slot/s for very precious materials which the player don't wanna lose. The attacker will still get his loot, but not the one in the HIDDEN POCKET. He wouldn't know what is in there anyway. The HIDDEN POCKET can have one, or just few slots and may get bigger with the mastery level. The HIDDEN POCKET should not be big, but large enough to make sense. Let say the pocket starts with one slot, then could expand to 3 and be capped at 5 or 7. Some testing would be needed to find the most useful number of slots for everyone.
Some regulations may exist. For instance - certain materials can't be put in the HIDDEN POCKET, or only one item or one stack of items for a certain type of potential loot can be there, or a certain cap for the stack of items.
The system with the HIDDEN POCKET can always be adjusted so that it doesn't destroy either crafting or PvP. Lets not forget: player looting is not the only incentive for open world PvP. Rivalries between guilds/clans, defending/invading territory, a town, the caravans. There could be events, arenas, battlegrounds, sabotages, spying and counter spying, achievements, titles. There is so much more that motivates players to do PvP. The loot is just one small aspect. So, the HIDDEN POCKET would not be a big issue that would destroy open world PvP ... in my view.
I think this was a shot across the bow of the ship, a warning. For the first time since I've been following this game, Intrepid has floated an idea that would destroy and/or trivialize core philosophies of their own game. Was it an accident? Maybe so, anything's possible. Hell of an "accident" though. Speak up people, it doesn't stop here, it never does.
And it'll only get worse as time goes on. As the early investors become a smaller total percentage, we'll be more easily thrown aside and disregarded. Not saying that's how it will be, but I definitely see the risk of it.
Almost no one who is a serious fan of Ashes wants a game where "gatherers" are fish in a barrel just waiting to be killed. We're counting on you Intrepid to design the game to where that is minimized to some extent.
- Dynamic as opposed to static resource node spawn. So players are moving, looking for resource nodes, not all just standing around like fish in a barrel in a small area waiting to be killed.
- Map/terrain design in general. Cover/hiding spots, multiple escape routes, a focus on not trapping people in areas, as fish in a barrel are trapped.
- Mount skills/Mounting speed. If you see mounted players on the horizon coming at you, and the time it takes you to call up your own mount is longer than it takes for them to close on you, you have a problem. It's not rocket surgery, that's bad design. Instead of giving me buttons to press that say "DERP I mitigate and eliminate my loot loss," give me TOOLS TO DO IT MYSELF. Mounts that are faster, that I choose to use for gathering in more hotly contested areas. Maybe mounts that can jump or something, like a deer or a ram that has a unique jumping skill that can be used to great effect in certain areas of the map. Obviously class skills, cc's and whatnot. Maybe consumables like a potion, speed boosts, use your imagination, possibilities are endless of things that can be thought up. Give us tools, not HERP DERP buttons. Exciting and emergent gameplay.
- Nodes/node loyalty. We're counting on you Intrepid to make the node system do what you've been saying it's supposed to do. Where we're not all just a bunch of wild animals thrown into a FFA pvp game. Community, node loyalty, the friendships, alliances and bonds that develop, these are things we are expecting you to incentivize and foster with the system's design. The average player should be motivated to become a member of these communities and receive the relative security therein, of living in a "home area," including friendly or allied nodes nearby. The average player should want to be a part of these communities, not just their own immediate circle of friends, where everyone who's not their friend is someone to kill.
- And finally the corruption system. We're counting on you Intrepid to get it right, to allow for some amount of fuckery to go on, but put a meaningful check on the excesses of griefing.
This notion of "gatherers." Gatherers will include pvp focused players and non pvp focused players. They are not this monolithic group of helpless, clueless players that need special protections, like some people have insinuated in this thread. In Ashes, they're just players. There will be hardcore pvpers that choose gathering. There will be pve focused players who don't choose gathering, they choose something else. And vice versa. Really not seeing the connection some people are making there.
Edit: Oh yeah, the Escape from Tarkov gamma case idea. EFT is full loot. When you die, you lose everything on your character except for what is in the gamma case.
In Ashes, your ENTIRE CHARACTER is a gigantic gamma case already. You lose almost nothing when you die. A portion of your gatherables. Your armor, weapons, accessories, consumables, tools, mounts, backpacks, you name it, all stays with you. Just an estimation, but probably around 95%+ of the value on your character all stays with you when you die. No chance of losing it.
Artisan gatherers will be prime targets for combatant players. With that said, would you like to see alternative play loops that provide you with a way to mitigate or eliminate the risk of dropping gathered materials?
But those are more expensive and risky, compared to mules.
Therefore mules should be safe only on the shortest path from resource to the closest city.
I don't think Gold should exist either. Would you stop playing because you can't play like you've played every other game and dont' know how that works out? Cut Metal Discs? Ingots? Trade Gathering Rights?
You're making a lot of assumptions about how terrible trading will be but the game isn't just about trading. It's Civ vs Civ, PvP, PvE, and figuring out how to excel in that environment is part of the game.
You talk about parasites but. . . you know what a PvP game is right? It doesn't suddenly become an aweful immoral crime when you introduce Resources into the game.
You can choose to go to a Civ Node that supports you, in the end. You have plenty of options.
Give certain node types (I'm guessing merchant) the ability to build drop boxes for gatherers. The Dropbox would be communal and be attackable.
If destroyed, the Dropbox would have a lower drop rate than if you are carrying it, so its appealing for gatherers. Because it's communal, attackers would have larger incentive to attack the dripbox because it could contain the material for multiple gatherers. This would also incentives the gatherers utilizing it to band together to defend it.
At the end of the gathering session, the player could either set up a caravan to bring everyone's mats back if others opt in or ferry their own mats back themselves.
This would add a system and gameplay loop that I think is in line with the core concept of Risk vs Reward in AoC
Safe zones near resources? Resources are normally all over the place in mmos. Everywhere. Dunno how you'd implement safe zones near resources if they're everywhere. That would be a massive design shift from Intrepid.
With how close nodes are to each other, in many areas of the map you're not all that far from the relative safety of a node anyway.
I agree with you there because they are a -if I remember right- broadcasted target/event.
JobBob wondering around the Dusky Hills for three hours looking for Franged Mushrooms, not gonna see a lot of action. Eh?
Game anchors people to an area more. Civ vs Civ [node vs node]. You're missing something in your picture. Imagine 150 people in 1 Vanilla World of Warcraft Zone, all citizens of the Civ there.
If players, on the other hand, are limited in what they can physically carry, coupled with requiring a transport/caravan/whatever to haul larger resources around, then the main way to take resources would mean there needs to be some transport/caravan/whatever hijacking, then the combatant has to find a way to hijack the transport/caravan/whatever and get away without being killed.
This would mean that control over particular resources and proximity to them become more important if you want to be able to haul your items back to a safe location.
If smaller amounts of resources could only be carried, and everything you have on you could be selected as something to take, while a majority of your items are being hauled back to town via transport...and your dead body carries very little in terms of certain gatherables, then you really wont lose much, unless its gems, or herbs...smaller, less heavy items...like currency....
If you dont belong to a node, and you harvest resources from that area, you should receive reputation penalties to that node. Trespassing! Die!