Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing happened with AoC.
The game will have most of its valuable content be party-based. Any solo content would most likely be more casual-friendly or just artisanal stuff. If you're going out there "permaflagged", I'd assume you believe in your ability to win against other players, you probably have good or maybe even great gear and you're obviously in a mood for pvp.
The majority of solo players will be just minding their own business and not thinking too much about any pvp encounters because they know that the corruption system is protecting them and that the attacker would have to have a pretty good reason to kill them (outside of the obvious few dicks). So most of these solo players won't be flagged up for no damn reason. And in the bigger picture of the server, you'd probably have to run around for dozens of minutes if not hours to find someone who's solo and is permaflagged (again, mainly because they'd just get mauled by any passing group of people).
So you're suggesting a system that will only work how you want it to work in maybe 3-4% of cases, if that. And will most likely reduce in time, because those permaflagged people will see that they just get attacked by stronger forces and while they themselves stay flagged, that stronger force becomes green after 90 secs so they can keep on doing whatever they wanted to do. So why in the hell would any logical person keep having that permaflag on them.
NW had this system because people whined about exactly the things I'm talking about. But Ashes will have a ton of other sources of pvp (including a permaflagged one), so there is literally no point in implementing the NW's one. Except AoC's systems are organically meaningful, while NW's system had to give you benefits to even begin to try and attract people to itself.
It removes the higher risk of being non combatant. If you are farming and can keep combatant flag up you never need to stop and attack a player to flag yourself. You can just go into full retreat, which will be much harder to kill than if they needed to fight back first.
The amount of builds that are designed purely to avoid combat with other players would skyrocket. I'm pretty sure that's the exact opposite effect of what you intend with a toggle on flagging.
What do you mean? Combatant is the absolutely most advantageous state to be in. Its built to specifically be better to encourage pvp. Why do you think it takes half the penalties that a non combatant takes?
That's such a weird take.
Combatant state in a scenario where you're being engaged by a player and wish to: halve your death penalty, or even successfully defend and kill the aggressor? Of course it's better than non-combatant, and you still have the option to flag that way.
A combatant state that is permanent by your own choice, makes you a potential target for anyone around, including groups, because they know beforehand that they can't receive corruption for killing you, which is not true the other way around.
The advantages you speak of, of permaflag purple over non-permaflag purple, are negligible when comparing disadvantages. Permaflag would literally be there only to serve as a bait for PvPers, which is not a bad thing considering how few people tend to engage in random OWPvP.
Green is not "protected". Might be less likely to be killed, but is not less likely to be attacked.
Everyone is a potential target.
Dying Purple rewards you with reduced death penalties in order to encourage players to flag Purple.
And, having people perma-flagged as Purple means they get to permanently have half-normal death penalties.
Which would make Ashes even more of a PvP-centric game than it currently is.
Unless your intent is to kill greens, have them receive full death penalty, and gain corruption yourself. Or if you have fun attacking any greens around to see if they fight back. Which you can still do, greens will be the majority.
The option to permaflag works in everyone's favor. Even if you think it doesn't (which is outright wrong for reasons I already layed out), very few people would use it anyway, as it has no PvE benefit and the advantages are outweighted by the disadvantages, greatly.
Optional permaflag would serve to increase the likelyhood of finding random OWPvP, and PvEers would be less likely to be hassled by PvPers looking for a fight.
And, if a player wants to kill a Green, they will try to kill a Green.
"Green is not "protected". Might be less likely to be killed, but is not less likely to be attacked."
If a player wants to kill a Green, they can kill a Green. But if a player wants random OWPvP, surely they'll go for the purple guy rather than green? This is where permaflagging comes in.
Well that's just not what the intent is for. You have these tools to fight other players off of resources or take theirs. It has nothing to do with random player killing. That's exactly what the corruption system wants to stop you from doing. If you want pvp take the risk to attack players or go do one of the other million ways they have setup for pvp.
And finally, just because people would feel more safe attacking a currently purple player doesnt mean there needs to be a toggle in the game.
In L2 the custom was to disarm your weapon and then slap someone as a challenge. You would do 1 point of damage challenging the other player to a duel, and your slap would make you purple, just like in AoC.
If a player wants to participate in random PvP, they will attack back and flag Purple.
Perma-flagging is not a thing... except on the Open Seas.
If the devs want to make the game even more PvP-centric than they announced a month ago - sure... they can have everyone be a Combatant by default.
You overestimate the "PvP-centerness" of AoC. The majority are PvEers, so random OWPvP (read: non-guild/node wars), as proven by New World, isn't likely to happen. There may be PK griefing if corruption is not done right, but it's a different subject, let's focus on consentual, random OWPvP. Running around fighting random players is some of the most fun I've had in MMORPGs (RF Online - 3 factions, no unflag; WOTLK PvP server - 2 factions, no unflag; New World - 3 factions, can unflag), and I worry I'm not gonna be able to experience that in AoC if people who wish to partake in random OWPvP have to go through the hassle of hitting randoms to flag themselves up. You just won't know if they're PvPers or not until you hit them and they fight back, which, IMHO, is an issue for PvPers like myself.
Whatever else you may be trying to say - it's not protection.
You seem to be saying that Purples can be killed without the penalty of Corruption. That is not the same thing as protection.
I'm not overestimating anything.
Ashes design now has a permanent auto-flag PvP zone. Since there is no permanent PvP-free zone, that makes the game more PvP-centric than it previously was... and...
If players can be perma-flagged Purple so they always receive half of the normal death penalties when they die... that makes the game even more PvP-centric.
Isn't your freehold supposed to be a PVP free zone permanently?
The whole point of the corruption system is to move all that "random" pvp into more meaningful and goal-based places/situations. Because in most cases, if you get randomly attacked while you're minding your own business, you probably didn't want to be attacked. Now Steven doesn't want to completely remove PKing, because he knows that sometimes you "just gotta", but random meaningless attacks (and especially kills) will be way rarer than in most faction-based mmos.
The problem with togglable flag is that no one will use it. If you want to pvp, there's gonna be several ways to do so against other people who want to pvp. Quite a lot of those people will be in the open world, but they'll be way more likely to fight back against you because they'd be participating in the same means of pvp as you.
I believe I remember hearing that fully 20% of dungeon and raid content will be instanced and therefore permanently PVP free... surely that qualifies as a zone by whatever definition you are using.
Also, it's not necessarily PvP free, AFAIK. It's just not open world.
Just saying... you said there were NONE... now you are arguing semantics.
I'm not arguing semantics. You may be trying to.
It's like I say "No county" and then when you say "but there is a house and office building."
And when I say neither houses nor office buildings are counties, you say... "Semantics."
smh
Instead of "running around fighting random players" you might be sailing around.
But on land there are caravans too and somebody has to attack them. You don't want them?
The corruption puts more pressure on attacker to kill when the other has valuable loot which seems ok.
Running around to kill 20, because is faster to find the one which is valuable is too easy.
But yes, I see your point. It can become really hard to find that one person which is worth being killed and looted if nobody fights back. Could be that some servers will have more players like you and then you fight each-other more often.