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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.
PvE Server
worddog
Member
How does a PvE server hurt the game exactly?
If you want open world PvP you just play on a PvP server.
The game can be designed the exact same way and nothing needs to change other than on a PvE server, open world PvP is just disabled. You'd still have areas where PvP is enabled, just not the entire map.
If you want open world PvP you just play on a PvP server.
The game can be designed the exact same way and nothing needs to change other than on a PvE server, open world PvP is just disabled. You'd still have areas where PvP is enabled, just not the entire map.
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Comments
Like I said I'm not going to play on a pve server even if they exist but some people seem way too angry about the idea. If adding pve servers helped the game keep more players and be more successful so that we can get more expansions, I'm all for it. It's not going to affect me at all.
The game is designed around WPvP. How do you plan to compete for dungeons/world boss/ressources in PvE servers ?
God, modern players are used to fully instanced themepark so they don't really understand how sandbox MMORPGs are working.
I'll be playing on a PvP server, thanks for not reading the post.
You still have PvP on PvE servers. Read the post again.
Why are there any safe zones at all? Why isn't PvP enabled 100% of the time? Why can't my guild mass murder people in cities?
Your guild CAN do that.
Nothing stops them now.
You need to siege a city to remove the safe zones, has that been changed?
What safe zones? Did something change?
Cities haven't ever had safe zones, have they? Do you have a Wiki reference for this, or do I need to go look for it? (I don't mind looking, but if it's NOT there it obviously would take hours to confirm that unless there is a clear counter-statement)
EDIT: Ok I found what you conflated.
Safe Zones: Your OWN Player stall while selling, your OWN Freehold (which is outside the city, one per account, must be earned).
I think is better to have the PvP and PvE players on the same server.
Having PvE servers would force the developers to create content in a different way and try to be competitive with all the other great PvE mmos who focus on them as main audience. The rules of what make a PvE mmo good are dictated by a different audience and the developers who know how to milk them.
The difference will not be just how the corruption is balanced.
Caravan system will most likely fall apart.
Sieges which destroy their homes will make no sense for them either. You do not attract PvE players with great content and still letting PvP sieges in game. NPC sieges maybe but tuned down so that players can still defend the node easily.
Then you end up with a different game as I do not see a team of developers making PvE servers competitive with other MMOs and then keeping and working on the PvP game vision too.
Then let's see what the mindset of those PvE players would be. What do they want?
Is it obtaining the high level gear the purpose?
To help them feel that they work on their objective of acquiring that and not wasting time running on the map, the AoC devs should add fast travel, ways to find a team with random players fast, even from other servers. Without PvP sieges, not having cross-realm interaction would be illogical. Why make player owned nodes if they do not fight each-other?
Those cause all the problems with the server merges. PvE players have absolutely no reason to accept separate servers and forced server merges with all the consequences upon the market and guilds.
Separate servers also prevent friends playing together if one starts later on an open server.
AoC has the challenge that it tries to attract PvE players who still search for that PvE mindset: the purpose of what they do.
And whatever their purpose is when they login, if the PvP-er can prevent them, is bad.
AoC must highlight more on selling that it offers the game-play and not the traditional objectives PvE-ers get in other games
And this objective, of working together to save the city must bring together both PvP-ers and PvE-ers.
The corruption system feels not designed for this, because it mentions only green, purple and red and nothing about citizens of the same node.
When players see PvP they assume other players close to them will kill them.
And I assume that actually citizens will have a reason to protect each-other even if they are not in the same guild.
But I do not see much concern on PvP-er side about this on this forum. They are only concerned that they lose the PvP aspect. What is the objective of the PvP? To loot the other player?
If players want to be able to kill the citizens of their own node (for PvP reasons) or be able to harvest safely resources near another node (for PvE reasons), then I think the game fails to achieve it's main purpose and will face direct competition with the other MMOs more fiercely as it will not stand out from the crowd with anything specific.
what about caravans? You get attacked but it's not consensual.
Steven has explicitly talked about the existence of safe zones not in relation to player stalls or freeholds. So I'm assuming the Wiki doesn't have all the information.
If we're really expecting Ashes to allow max level players to permanently spawn camp level 1 players, the game will objectively be unplayable.
Even if you want open world PvP, there will always be places that open world PvP is disabled. Unless you want the game to actually just die and only play with like a small community that likes that really niche idea.
I'm just saying I would be glad to know what you mean/what quote you are referring to.
I have never heard it, that's all. So I go with what exists in the game and what we were able to do in Alpha-1 and in Alpha-1 you could kill people in cities. If your point was about 'Safe Zones in general' I understand. But cities are NORMALLY Safe Zones (and I consider this realistic personally for lots of reasons so even as a PvP player I would not mind it, I'd personally just make it so that flagging in a city makes you instantly Red).
To 'make it so Nodes aren't safe zones', to the point where you have to SPECIFY 'you can't be attacked in a city WHILE in your stall', seems intentional to me, so I would like to know what counterpoint, if any, Steven has ever said.
Caravans are optional, so you'd have to consent to PvP to start a caravan route. Some things would of course require PvP like caravans and sieges. PvE players still enjoy PvP just as much as people on PvP servers, they just don't enjoy being level 10 and getting spawn camped by a max level player for 6 hours.
The only things I've heard him say:
1. When a node is upgrading, players are teleported to a safe zone.
2. When a green/purple player dies they respawn in a safe zone.
Again, this is very vague and doesn't really mean much. But because he said safe zones exist, I just assumed they would want safe zones to be an important mechanic, and not just super specific things like player stalls.
My hope is that this game doesn't pointlessly throw away 80% of the player base for no reason. I'm sorry but if you like instantly dying to a max level player while you're trying to level, that really doesn't make you a better person or even a hardcore gamer. That is a very niche experience that few people value.
Yes, I'm aware, I don't necessarily agree with everything that Intrepid's designs lead to, either, I just want to make sure we're all giving feedback or 'arguing' from the correct stances.
So far we don't expect there to be many safe zones. I think we weren't even sure if Freeholds were actually going to be safe zones for a while. That's how rare the concept was.
Caravans have the "same problem"
Not exactly relative to MMOs as people are used to them.
People pick up an MMO with an idea of 'thing they will do most of the time', 'thing they will do sometimes', 'thing they will do occasionally'.
If you put a lot of PvP into the FIRST of those, and the player wasn't planning on that, they're MUCH more concerned than if it is in the second or third.
More players put 'PvP' in the second slot than in the first slot.
I think Ashes would need to reach the point where 'most players don't have to put PvP into the first slot' to match those players. But it doesn't need to cater to all the people who 'refuse to put it into the second slot too'.
Ok, here's a few reasons why opt-in would break the game.
Firstly, the dungeons and raids are currently 80%+ open-world with the BiS gear and materials coming from open-world content rather than instanced. If they made PvP opt-in, then you'd just have 1000 people sitting in dungeons trying to snipe the bosses and mobs before the other 1000 people who are PvE only.
Next, the economy. Take the example above of dungeons and raids being open-world, maybe your solution to the above point is making the dungeons instanced, but then they need to redesign all the loot drops since you can't just have people being able to enter an instanced area and kill their own version of these mobs and bosses otherwise it would increase the number of drops coming in to the game 100 fold. And because the large large majority of items in Ashes do not bind to your character, neither on pick up or equip, this means the market will be flooded with these items.
Next is world bosses. World bosses are planned to drop some of the rarest items in the game, such as Flying Mount Eggs. But now without PvP, there's no contesting this stuff. It's just which group can deal the most damage and get lucky enough to get the drops instead of guilds contesting each other and earning the drops.
Next is caravans. Why would anyone use a caravan when they can just run the materials from one end of the map to the other without the risk of losing any of the gatherables/processed goods when they die? Sure it might take longer, but most people would prefer to put on a stream or Netflix and run stuff across the map while chilling. You've now basically made caravans useless.
Okay if that's the foundation we're working from, than that version of Ashes open world PvP sounds really bad in my opinion. I don't even think I'd want to play on a PvP server that unregulated. And I love PvP, like in Lost Ark I was top 500 before I quit and I didn't do any high level raiding.
I love the idea of node sieges, but I assumed those would be instanced and everyone would have set date and time for when it occurs. If people are just having massive battlegrounds in the middle of a city at 3 am that sounds really stupid to me.
We're not talking about opt-in PvP
Opt-in is absolutely horrible.
You have either PvE or PvP SERVERS and they never change the rulesets for those servers.
Right, you are one of those 'PvP goes in second slot' players.
And you ARE a PvP player.
Basic (overarching) game design. Like I said, I don't know EXACTLY why Intrepid designed things this way, but if it loses your support or you drift away, know that there will always be people here trying to get them to fix it relative to what you might prefer.
I'll spare everyone the long explanation about why 'no Safe Zones' is utterly unrealistic for a gameworld/immersion.
I'm not sure what problem we're talking about. Dying to a high level player during a caravan route is consensual. You're taking a risk that you've accepted beforehand.
You could walk the entire way with mule(s) it would just take 100x longer.
on a pve server caravans are useless. why have that system at all
People were talking about this before that video. You can check the timestamps of previous threads.
Also why do you feel the need to not respond to the topic and instead try to discredit a youtuber than nobody is talking about in this thread.