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Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
Imagine you traveled across the continent for half an hour with a buddy to go farm somewhere, only to find out that the region you're visiting was recently swept over by local node family you and your peers never normally communicate with or have any incentive to go to war against because they're so far away. They've decided to make PKing free with no corruption in place to discourage wanton murder. You start farming, and find you and your friend getting harassed by the local population because they've decided they're special enough to deserve to murder whoever they want without any consequences. Travel time wasted, and the content is now frustrating to deal with because your guild / local community, the only ones left who'd be interested in backing you up, are all the way across the map. That sounds terrible. You can't have major gameplay foundations like death / PK penalties be constantly up in the air at the whims of the players.
There are many outlets for this, namely guild wars, node wars, arenas, and open sea combat. If you get involved in a guild who wants to take a castle, you'll get regular opportunities for large scale PvP events and defendable territory.
Games generally have (mostly) predictable rules for players to play around, because if you formulate and try to execute a strategy around those rules, only to find your strategy screwed because the game's core rules changed without your knowledge, that's a really bad feeling. I don't think this suggestion will be conducive to player retention.
See the problem here?
So the sea acts as a filter for spiritual corruption? Then the lore is broken already.
This sounds really good, makes me salivate for it!
It has danger, has content, has player driven roleplay. When YOU are the content it's always better than npc content made by a real life company and it's game designers.
Who told these invaders to come through my node without asking permission and paying the toll?
They have to be butchered for that.
You are exagerating on this, because before you travel to a node you already know it's tier and which kind of node it is, knowing the Corruption rule for the node it's just another line on screen.
Travelling for such place would be lovely, specially if they are enemies.
When the carebears upgrade their node through their endless hoarding and carebearing doing PVE activities they will make your node a vassal node, then they will collect taxes and xp from your node!
Then you are doomed, you are a vassal now, your node is poor, your xp and gold is going right to the pocket of your OPRESSORS!
Vassals can't declare war on their masters, ganking is the only way, the mayor has to talk to the citizens and open an election for such policy, they will vote and absolutely murder their opressors!
This is how revolutions are formed, just change which deity the node will follow and the with the power of the deity their souls will be purified by blood, there will be no corruption if you follow Moloch!
We need demons to worship in AoC!
There's a flaw in your argument that I hope you can see and understand though, @Arya_Yeshe.
If you let the node decide on optional corruption, the resulting "free for all" will enable griefing for players that decide to choose that path.
That's not what Intrepid wants, and not what most of the replies in this thread want.
I don't like carebears almost as much as you don't like carebears ... but this is the way.
Preventing gathering and bots can be as simple as declaring guild wars, node wars, or even having an alt specifically for ganking bots which you could care less to have corruption on. I personally plan to have an alt guild for whatever server I am on for the sole purpose of inviting anyone who wants to go clear out bots, and hopefully make it known on the server not to kill the guilds corrupted since they'd only target suspected bots and not actual gatherers
Me to
Corruption Needs to be there to protect the farmers, carebears, and PvEers because they are the ones that will make the game successful - hardcore PvP players are not enough to keep Ashes alive.
because of that, they need to keep to the plan and let corruption be a harsh punishment system, we already got the open seas to be pvp zones and that's even more than we originally expected so, be lets happy with that, and let's not try to advocate for things that can potentially kill this game
Ganking people over and over thousands of times is not griefing, if the farmers engage in bot like behaviour they die like bots.
Real players who are paying attention will barely or almost never get ganked.
Griefing is what the gold farmers do, they farm fortunes to finance their war industry and better gear so they can overpower everybody else.
The carebears are just cheating you, they syphon all that gold to their pvp alt and murder you, they's how the weasel their way to victory. They want all rewards for no risk.
Then they engage in bot aspirancy behaviour and ruin the market, this is why Crafting in World of Warcraft is completely garbage and irrelevant.
I'm sorry dude but this game isn't eve. Theres no highsec that makes the carebears feel safe and warm at night.
If you want to wage war then you'll have to engage in node wars/sieges or against guilds with guild wars.
Otherwise you'll just have to convince the mayor that random people are spais and put them on the enemy of the state list.
But what you're suggesting is way too murderhobo and would drive pve players away. This is going to be a pvx game and you'll have to live with it if you want to play.
It is somewhat better.
Still I need more info to understand:
- if this is supposed to be a node policy, why you refer to the attacker in general? The way you describe it, it matters not who attacks the target. You include both citizens and non-citizen of that node, who may be citizens of other nodes.
- is there a relationship between 1, 2, 3, 4, like priorities? I don't know how the policies work. My assumption is that only one can be active, and you seem to assume the same, as 1 and 4 are mutually exclusive. Therefore why 2 and 3 try to cover disjunct groups cititens / non-citizens?
- now that I was writing, I realize also that "non-citizens of the node" makes no sense. A non-citizen cannot be "of the node". Basically that means the rest of the map. Unless in a very special case, where the player rented an apartment in that node but did not declared citizenship, a case wiki seems to allow but might actually be a mistake.
Also take into account that the town/city/metro of the node, has a zone of influence which overlaps with the ZoI of other nodes. It is possible that a citizen will place its freehold in a way that if the node falls after a siege, he can get citizenship in another node without even moving the freehold. So if a PvP fight occurs, that may take place on the ZoI of multiple nodes at the same time, if they all overlap.
I will describe in advance my view about the effect of the corruption.
- As it is now, the corruption greatly reduces conflicts between citizens of the same node. This is needed because players would fight each other and if citizens in the node fight, that node will not progress, and they'll not build the node defenses. The intention of the game is to favor the cohesion of players within the nodes and to make them fight against the other nodes when needed. Strong bonds will be created, not just spontaneous cooperation during a siege.
- It still allows killing bots operating in the area but players must notify in chat local bounty hunters to not intervene. This will work fine because the population of a node will be quite small and players will end up knowing each-other. However bots will still be protected if their number is high and players do not distribute the corruption onto a large enough number.
- it does not protect resources being harvested by citizens of another node. But because there is no teleportation, the foreign gatherers will still be exposed to risks if they do not store them in the nearby node. This will give a greater incentive for caravans to exist.
- it is still not clear to me why somebody would use the caravan instead of a fully loaded mules. Can be that is worth getting corruption for the materials dropped by one gatherer+mule, while the caravan protection is theoretically more organized. But a large team of gatherers ready to fight might still have advantage over caravans.
Now if you clarify your side, you can already see how I will approach your suggestion: the caravan system is the most important followed by the cohesion within the node.
As others have pointed out, I think it's best that there is a portion of the map that disregards the corruption system, the game seems like it will cater to all types of playstyles, and the corruption system exists to keep rowdy players in line by using that system, so there must be something that exists outside of that system, the sea.
Personally i think of the sea as the wilderness in Runescape, just without full loot. PVP, no penalty, you should know the risks of going there, and not blame the game or other player if you die.
I want loopholes so I can be a murder hobo.
( awkward rationalization )
No.
The purpose of the system is to protect the other aspects of an mmorpg:
Character progression
Crafting/gathering/wealth
Exploration
Questing
Raiding
AoC will also have some unique world building aspects and polished world trading gameplay.
PvP combat is only one aspect of good mmos. PvP can be restricted, which leads to boring gameplay like ESOs Cyrodill and other meaningless battlegrounds or instanced pvp.
In an open world mmo you need a good system to keep all aspects healthy, overwise you have pvdooring.
The flagging/PK/corruption system (unrelated to the lore) is there to prevent players from going on a killing spree.
If you have more than 4 PKs on your player tab you will gain way more corruption per new kill.
While you are red, you have reduces combat stats and you must burn off your corruption points by killing mobs or dying, to return to normal state.
If you have 4 or more PKs you will probably lose your hard earned/crafted armor, weapons and jewels upon death. Gear wont be easy to come by in AoC.
There will be activities that players can undertake to erase their PK count. That means that if you are reasonable, you will always be able to kill at least 3 innocent players, but you wont be able to go on a killing spree.
The link I posted shows how thos system works, from a game back in 2003. There are no loopholes. You should understand now why the system is needed.
if you are in my farming spot, i will take it from you.
if you dont flag, i will go red.
if i cant go red, i will mob drop u.
if i cant mob drop u, ill kill u with an alt.
if u bring ur friends, i will not ask how many they are, but where they are.
A lively element of the game will be knowing you can be attacked just about anywhere, at any time. If the Node policies include the ability to adjust Corruption either way, then you're messing with a core game mechanic; it'd be subtracting from the feel of the game.
Also, remember that there will be different chat-channels. All a gold seller has to do is to park their toon in a player stall to make their toon un-touchable. If you're promoting this idea as anti-bot, just remember that they *already* have safe-spots to park and spam in the local channels; Any work-around or solution should be designed around *this* mechanic.
Bwhahahahaha! Good one! 🤣
From reading your posts, it sounds like this game isn't for you.
Steven has shown that he wants everyone to be able to kill almost anyone at almost any location. Very few limitations. However, Steven does understand how many players will abuse that system. So, he has implemented the corruption system specifically to deter people from going on killing sprees against lowbies or those who do not fight back. The specific features that you have described wanting is pretty much the opposite of the vision for Ashes.
Just because you found a reason that many players would accept for you to kill corruption free does not mean that the corruption system should be removed from the game.
I like the idea but not in that exact way. I think corruption should always exist how it is, but maybe like military nodes could reward corrupt players with something.
Guild wars seems a good prospect to kill more people from the other node, but still not everybody will be war deccable... i believe many people will have afk gatherers hoarding riches non stop and they won't be in a guild... they will simply farm endlessly and bring that sweet xp to the master node making the other nodes as slaves
it can also be use strategically to limit enemy movements in your area leading up to a war and all that too. Could be limited to certain nodes like military node as a policy too i guess, they can also have a policy option of the opposite too of more rewards for bounty hunting or what not
Arya, anyone who bots (the AFK gatherer running endlessly that you mention) is botting and their account will be banned, perma~banned.
Ok. You got me Ashes community. I'm out.
Nowdays I understand that, but I might still want to gank people from certain guilds without a guild war declaration.
I could also have better control on certain items in the market, if only my guild farms that material then we have an edge.
There's also another problem with what you just said, because if you live in a vassal node then you can't level your node anymore!
Because vassals can't advance to the same level as the master node... also 1% of the xp goes to the master node... so you might want the master node to be deleveled... if you can force deleveling the master node than you are free from vassalage and then your node can level up with no cap
Yeap, thats cool thinking about the greater strategic objects, this is a thing.
Another thing is that people aren't thinking straight because they are carebears!
Look... if you live in a vassal node you can not declare war against the master node and also your vassal/slave node will be capped so you can't level the mode beyond your master!!!
So if people are farming PVE in your vassal node then 1% of the xp goes to the master node!
That is treachery!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If you can force the master node to be deleveled then your vassal node is free and your node wont be capped anymore, then your people can level your node and be the new master
How will you force the master node to be deleved?
Because today a slave node can't declare war or revolt against the master node
Deleveling the master is the only thing that can free the slave nodes
Slave nodes are capped and 1% of the xp from pve activities goes to the master node, making sure the master will still oppress the slave nodes
Freely doing PVE is treachery if your node is capped and if a part of the xp goes to the master
What I am saying is there must be ways of forcing the master node to be deleveled forcefully... the carebears can travel to another node and do their farming there... but when nasty stuff will go on between two nodes they have to be aware and have to be removed otherwise will plaster the situation
I am in for letting the carebears in the node know what is going on and let them decide if they still want to farm in that node or in another node...
We could extort them into stop farming in the master node and go farm in the slave node... helping in the efforts of liberation... this can be done purely in roleplay manners... the mayor can also use policies for making the slave node more attractive and the gankers could steal from the carebears... also the guilds in the slave node could declare war on guilds who are farming in the master node
Are you sure you are pvp oriented?
not always if ur node hit capped level due to other noides i dont want people taking resources from citizens of my node so it beter they dont harvest in the node im in at that point