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You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Wild Speculation: Gatherer Pvp
Sathrago
Member, Alpha Two
So I was just sitting here relaxing, slamming down some chicken for dinner and listening to Narc's latest video: "Ashes of Creations Most IMPORTANT Reveal is FINALLY Coming!!". Suddenly though I had a thought spark after Steven mentioned that you need to be careful how you harvest an area. Land management will be important and if done poorly an area will suffer and degrade.
Do you see where I am going with this? For those that do not, what I am speculating might happen is players will migrate into enemy territory specifically to harvest and degrade their lands resources. With a coordinated "offensive" you could potentially cause heavy damage to the stability of an enemy node.
This could birth a whole meta around establishing who is from where when it comes to gathering, and might even cause players to attack and drive off "unknown" gatherers from their nodes. Now I am not sure if gathering will provide exp to the node its done in but even then if the drawbacks to the degradation of the land is greater than the exp gain it would be worth using tactically.
Lol at the end of the day, it's just speculation but It would certainly be interesting if this was how it will work.
Do you see where I am going with this? For those that do not, what I am speculating might happen is players will migrate into enemy territory specifically to harvest and degrade their lands resources. With a coordinated "offensive" you could potentially cause heavy damage to the stability of an enemy node.
This could birth a whole meta around establishing who is from where when it comes to gathering, and might even cause players to attack and drive off "unknown" gatherers from their nodes. Now I am not sure if gathering will provide exp to the node its done in but even then if the drawbacks to the degradation of the land is greater than the exp gain it would be worth using tactically.
Lol at the end of the day, it's just speculation but It would certainly be interesting if this was how it will work.
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Comments
Also, Intrepid said that any action that gives XP of any sort will level up nodes, so I'd imagine that gathering does that too. But, while you're leveling up their node for them, you'll be taking away their resources and potentially removing some spawns of those resources for whatever period of time Intrepid deems necessary.
This would definitely lead to more soft friction between players and has a huge potential for scheming and machinations. And if what I said in the first paragraph works out as I think it will, we'll have ourselves protected gatherers that will be pushed to fight for their resources on their nodes and an optional "pvp" action of going to another node to aggressively gather stuff there.
Land management is a way to direct traffic. Steven is a player... he will force us together as best he can.
ITS THE WHOLE POINT.
I am fairly massively excited about this.
Just player nature.
This is truly amazing!
I won't have to gank people now, this is really good.
Now I can just play wars and sieges and sea stuff.
I don't like the fact that players who try to harvest resources on the teritory of another node are protected by the corruption system.
Also own citizens might harvest more and cause the land degradation. Some might even be bots.
This game mechanic while highlights the gatherer's greed and is an incentive to kill them, the killing comes too late, after the act of harvesting occurred.
Ideally players should have the possibility to vote for a node policy and enforce who should have the rights to harvest. Don't just come and say "Be greatful that I help your node get xp. Give me the resources."
Yeah, Corruption kinda prevents people from defending resources, but if they farm in your node they will upgrade your node if you are not a vassal.
But if a pack of people come from somewhere else, it's probably from the master node and you will be probably a vassal and then your node is level capped....!!
So you will have to do guild wars and kill at least the gatheres who are at war with you.
My idea was that the citizens could vote for changing the node's deity, let's say that in AoC there's a Baal demon who can be worshiped and you could give your corruption as an offering to him once a week or so... people from another node who are in your node. Stuff like that... for now what we have is that military nodes will be able to wash corruption faster.
Economical sabotage by harvesting could be a thing, I would do it, this kinda happens in EVE Online, but in EVE people mine the anomalies and mine all the ice and ore belts before the other corporations. Also in EVE, wormholers do some ninja mining and sneak into other people's wormholes and huff all their gas clouds as fast as possible and then run away. Gas and ice aren't always available, so people ninja mine the good stuff in your system. On highsec areas you can't do nothing except for suicide ganking them and then you die to the npcs... it is a thing!
In AoC you could do guild wars if you see that a specific guild from the other node is doing that, I know it's not enough, but it's a viable option on the table.
If you are in a master node then the generated xp caused by those trespassers will help you level your node, but if you are in a vassal node then these trespassers will just degrade your node's resources.
This is why CAREBEARS ruin all the games, they over farm stuff and force the companies to bend the knee to their relentless carebearing and demand safety everywhere so they can just farm stuff while being safe.
I mean, the corruption system kind of makes it better because they'll likely opt to not fight back which means they'll drop more of their resources that they were taking from your node. Could even work with your nodes bounty hunters by telling them who you are killing and likely be ignored as a potential kill for being corrupted if you're doing it to the benefit of the node. This is why I think a kill log for guilds and even for bounty tracking would be awesome. So and so is corrupted for killing Joe schmoe from.another node in your home ZOI? Cool, give him a pass for helping out the node.
Though I haven't thought through the idea fully so I dunno what kind of exploits this kind of system could create.
Honestly I can't think of any exploits at the moment. It's just information for clarity.
If you kill them, you might not recover 100% of resources. You get corruption. And the land degradation was done.
Would be easier if own citizens would harvest them. But that is the point. If we can somehow convince own citizens to avoid over harvest resources, the foreign ones still do that.
Then own citizens will do that too because there is no reason to wait.
That could encourage the gatherers to bring the resources to the local node too.
Different kind of permits could exist, for common abundant resources would be cheaper while the ones for rare resources would be more expensive.
The mayor would set these rates, separately for own citizens, allies and neutrals.
Then neutrals could still try to harvest and be smugglers, gaining more resources with the risk of being attacked and looted.
Having this permits would allow the game to know how to apply corruption too, to be more harsh or more lenient.
Nodes could even reward bringing resources from foreign nodes while those nodes would have policies to prevent that.
Permits? Going with a hard no on that one.
Why not? You do not trust politicians?
This definitely would further lend itself to the dynamic mentioned by the op, where foreign nodes, guilds and players try to spark a pve attack on your node via over-harvesting. Maybe this could even be a tactic used leading up to a node siege.
Sounds fun.
Are any of you really believe players will discipline themselves and not harvest everything in sight? The gathering wars will be about who harvest things first.
Responsible land management... in a virtual world...
We will have to see what the consequences of over-harvesting actually are.
If the consequences are insignificant, then yeah, land management will be ignored by most players.
Without judging too much before seeing the system in action, I have to say, I agree with this sentiment. I can imagine hundreds of thousands of players entering the game in the first few months, the vast majority of them over-harvesting because they’re shortsighted and don’t care about the virtual world of Vera, then pissing off and playing their PvE MMO when the world is devoid of resources, and coming back later to drain it again.
I hate to be cynical, but I’ve seen plenty of MMO communities, and I assume most of you have as well. Let’s be honest, the majority of the people in them aren’t responsible enough to care about this system. They’ll take the world for everything it has, leave when things are over harvested, then come back later in droves to get more when their favorite Twitch streamer tells them the server is coming back to life.
I’ve always wanted a game with true consequences for player action, but when such a large portion of the MMO player base are careless, care mostly about personal progression, or only in it for the lulz, it has the potential to bomb the experience for everyone. So we’ll see how intense Intrepid are really able to make these consequences.
You could also say
Haha, no teleportation
Are any of you really believe players will run over the map to raids?
This game likes controversial ideas.
The Dev Discussion #45 - Gathering and PvP thread suggests that they want to protect those who declare themselves "gatherers".
Those who want to gather without permission might have to waive protection and expose themselves to increased PvP risk.
Leave that in the hands of players? Make them watch over the area and solve the issues through PvP? If that sound good to you, what % of your play time are you ready to spend patrolling the land to prevent other to pick the forbidden fruits or the wrong flowers? Will you volunteer to do so when the rest of your guild/friends are out to raid a dungeon? How is the area watched over 24/7? What do you do when the offenders are citizens of the node? Who can, or has priority to, gather at the "allowed" rate? Who commands enough authority to make that decision and it being followed?
It's not only a question of being cynical, it's just that it's an administration nightmare for a large group of random players, which is what a node will be.
I don’t find the lack of fast travel to be exactly comparable. I don’t think @Percimes is saying people will leave due to a lack of convenience and that that’s a problem.
What I think we’re both saying is that in a situation like this, where a mass amount of players will technically be given the choice to swarm the land for resources with no regard for anyone but themselves and create negative consequences for everyone in doing so, they will make that decision regardless because they’re shortsighted and hold little value for the equilibrium of a virtual world. I’m going on to suggest that they’ll then just leave the game temporarily for their other PvE MMO and come back when the land heals again. Rinse and repeat.
I’m not so sure this’ll just be a few players here and there able to be coordinated around and PvP controlled. I think it could easily get out of hand and become a sizable issue. But again, it’s hard to say for sure. Just a concern I have.
Just speculation, but that makes more sense than having resources get run dry by players. Instead, rampant gathering just triggers events more often that must be dealt with.
Interesting angle, but if clearing the events provides better or rare rewards then the risk is to enter a cycle of over-gathering to get the resources and then the bonus special events. Reset and repeat.
Granted, it could be tweaked with timers in between end of events and normal respawn rates, or cascading events getting worse or more dangerous for the rest of the node (vengeful nature spirit/elemental and what not threatening cities).
Well if you fail an event it can negatively.impact the node. So maybe have the amount of resources feed into the increase of difficulty of the event. That would help correlate the difficulty with massive nodes, requiring the nodes population to react as a whole to maintain it.
An opposing node could gather and increase the difficulty or even intervene in events to make them fail and negatively impact the node.
You underestimate gatherers. Long term sustainability can make them care and protect their farming spots.
Entering into enemy territory to loot and bring back resources is fun too. Can be more fun than doing scripted dungeons.