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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.
Comments
As for your suggestion that people would simply spend a small amount of money to get some cheap gear for the island every time they went so as not to lose their best gear: If almost everyone did that, what would be the point? You’d all be trading garbage around. All in the hopes that one numbskull goes there with their good gear on and… trashes you because you’re wearing garbage gear? What? This is just PvPing on the mainland without losing your good gear like normal, but with extra steps.
Did you just confuse real life objects with pixels on the screen?
Careful with that
Carebears confuse real life with pixels very frequently too, that's why they rage when they lose a little bit of lumber and a couple leather pieces
Social skills is what make MMOs easy, it's the same social skills children had 30 years ago
Kid's did not accumulate anything in those days, they played based on content and that's why it was fun
Since you seeing games through the eyes of a carebear, let me introduce another view:
People will go for the fights, for the adrenalin, some people will go with good enough gear because they want to yeet and have an edge
Games that were made for accumulating things always become boring and shallow of content, accumulating is the carebearing
If I have an area of 100% drop, for sure I will have a special chest just to stash gear for that and then I will use it all in fights in such area and many people will do the same. This could be a once a week thing with the guild members, go for a roam, do a crossroads camp
EVE Online is the most brutal game in history and people do this the entire time, until today 19 years later people are still doing it, in EVE when you lose a ship everything is lost and people yeet constantly and get good fights
Thirty years ago children came together for playing in person, using their social skills
The same social skills children needed for playing with each other are the same social skills that let you prevail in MMOs... this is being lost in recent times and lost through game design too
PvP in itself will never hurt you as much as lack of social skills will
My hope in AoC is not so much it's systems, what brought me to AoC was Steven's interview because I saw that we are like minded in many things, I hope that AoC delivers systems that let people have player driven content
The games in the last years became boring because player driven content was erradicated from them, games became shallow and tasteless... people aren't comming together anymore for content, nowadays people are comming together for grinding and hoarding items (aka carebearing)
In a player driven content enviroment it is up to you to say who is good or bad, who has to die and why, who you will band with and to do what... player driven content is a story sandbox where it's the players who tell what is going on in the world and they will fight each other for that
I know you are being sarcastic but this thought did originally cross my mind. If you had a full loot island, for those so inclined, it would give them a place to go. Just to say also, full loot is just one more step from what is already in the game. You can kill someone and take their gatherable/harvestable, just not their gear.
It would need to be cross server though.
No point in a full loot PvP area if you're the only person there.
@Noaani Don't worry, I will be there at max level in my level 11 greens farming level 10 green gear for my storage when I decide to fight the other people sitting there on Nightmare Island....Also farming garbage gear??
Peak Content. Hopefully someone at Intrepid is reading this thread for all the free content real estate.
I'm not even particularly interested in full loot PVP, but as a crafter, I know that having people fight and lose their gear drives demand. I also know that there are people who like that type of gameplay and don't see how in a sandbox as big as Verra having a small area for that type of gameplay would be a bad thing.
People are acting like this isn't already a fundamental principle of the game. "Risk vs Reward".
Even when there's no destruction, the item just going from one person to the other person it drives demand
Because the killed player will need items now and the second player has a high chance of just stockpiling the item, nobody will see that item again for months in many cases
In many games people loot others and stash the loot and then completely forget about it, guy will only see it months later, then reprocess or sell or go die in PvP and lose it
So you bring up a good point. Risk v. Reward.
Let's look into this then. So I am going to introduce some conceptual "motivators". Rare crafting materials, bosses with loot drops, etc. As soon as you introduce this full loot island, two people will show up "market leaders" and "vultures". Due to the nature of losing everything you have on you, there will be a large population of people (myself included) that won't risk the loss of my raid gear/arena gear/XYZ gear and will show up in trash greens I spent 3 gold on and this includes "vultures" that will use stealth mechanics and other avenues to target people to try and gain something. The other group will be people who run the server that have 2/3 back-up BIS sets that try to box out everyone else for materials/valuables on this island to further their advantage.
I'd reckon that MOST won't even have the stomach for this type of content and so what you are left with is either enough people to take out the "market leaders" in which case you push them off the rewards and then resume vulture activity, or you fail and there is a new uncontested resource being gobbled up by the Haves leaving the have nots with another blip on the map they don't care about.
Part of the mechanics of Ashes is that most of the friction points are over something of value and over things the game NEEDS to function (caravans/castle siege/gathering nodes/OWBosses) and the point of weighing risk v reward is that you don't lose everything so you can accurately weigh how much certain things mean to you. When you throw that to the wind for full loot, nothing means anything and you return to the problem where everyone is showing up in garbage gear so there is no "value add" since you are bringing nothing to this arena because you know there is a good chance you will lose it.
Spend some time looking into Rust and it will take you all of 30 minutes to know that the behavior you seeking from the addition of this island is not what you will get if this is introduced.
Even if no one sees the item again for months, that player will still evemtually sell it,meaning one person will hit that item I stwad of a newly crafted item.
I think you are over exaggerating how many people would stockpile vs sell immediately. Even then, all those people stockpiling item to sell later are doing is delaying the point at which they enter the market.
If the goal is to increase the need for crafters,there are far more effective methods for doing this.
Stop trying to make Ashes look like something its not designed to be. If you want to be a helpful, help support Ashes in becoming the game it can be, not the game you want it to be.
No one will equip items they can’t replicate or replace easily. So it will drive crafting, but only for items of a certain quality, power, & cost effectiveness.
Not terrible, but it doesn’t seem to align with the design of Ashes. Especially considering that a proportionate level of risk v. reward can be achieved through the proposed world systems without further alienation of the PvP-maybe audience.
It was only a few short months ago that the additional islands and the auto-flagged nature of the open ocean and node ruins were revealed. Suggesting that it might be a good idea for one of these entirely new areas be full loot, to cater to those who like that type of gameplay, and to protect those who are not interested is pretty pedestrian. My desire is to see AoC become a success. Making suggestions towards that end is not being "unhelpful".
One of the issues that Steven mentioned and I think will become more pronounced as time goes on is how much time, effort and energy is needed to create engaging PvE content.
Yes, theres more effective ways, destruction and consuption are better overall
I think many people will equip legendary stuff in the long run, because in all games people farm those non stop and then they simply start selling everything or reprocessing
Everybody gets rich and the good gear becomes meaningless, so I think people will save the good legendaries and will go pvp with 100% loot drop with other legendaries
Exactly, doesn’t align with the game Steven has been designing does it?
I don't know if it's aligned or not
One think I have to bring up that people are not even touching is the fact that some loot will be lost in such fights, sometimes you are killing people and running, some bodies stay behind otherwise you die
Full loot PvP brings new dynamics, sometimes staying mobile is the only thing you can do to survive, some loot stays behind and decay
There's times you don't have enough space in the bag, then you just cherry pick what you want and everything else stays in the corpse and then decays... this happens a lot
Stuff like these that I am bringing here you won't even see carebears talking about
Again, with the presumptuous carebear accusations. It’s okay buddy, don’t have a heart attack. I’m not going to take your PvP away.
I didn’t confuse anything. I equated months’ worth of multi-hour-long play sessions to achieve a respectable set of gear to months’ worth of IRL multi-hour-long work sessions to achieve a meaningful personal belonging. Doesn’t matter if the pixels are earned from a game and the IRL belonging is earned from a job. You invested similar amounts of time in them - an amount of time that one would likely not want to repeat back from the same level as when they first started. At least not by losing everything they’ve worked for all at once.
We’re not talking about “a little bit of lumber and a couple leather pieces” in this conversation. We’re not talking about losing a bit of gatherable resources. We’re talking about an entire set of gear. So drop the carebear spiel, we’ve all heard it from you a million times.
You suggest resource gain and a permanent increase in player power do not make games fun, well I agree that they don’t have to. But having one progressively better set of gear isn’t “accumulation”. It’s evolution and growth. Out with old gear, in with new gear that I’ve earned through consistent effort.
To put myself in a position where I can have that all taken away from me by some coward hiding in a bush waiting to pounce on me with half my health left after I’ve finished killing someone else would be an utterly boneheaded move on my part.
So again, I say, why on earth would anyone go to this island with decent quality gear? Because the devs have put interesting high-level PvE content or objectives to pursue, luring people in for even BETTER gear? Well guess what, it’s still not worth it if I run the risk of losing all or even most of my gear in one death. How far will that set me back before I can visit the island again with decent gear? Weeks? Months? Very few people will find this system worthwhile.
The gap between the insanely high risk and insanely high reward it would therefore require would be so great that it will simply drive most players away. It’s like asking people to pay $1000 to buy a lottery ticket. Even if the jackpot is a billion dollars, how many people are really going to take the risk of losing and setting themselves back $1000?
So then, you admit that the vast, vast majority of people will not wear their good gear to this island? People will buy crummy gear, with some people buying slightly less crummy gear than others. But if they’re all wearing crummy gear, how’re they going to take on these max level PvE objectives that give such amazing gear and make visiting the island so appealing? If they aren’t difficult enough to give max level gear, why would anyone go? And if they’re almost all wearing crummy gear, then why bother having full loot? All you’ll be looting is crummy gear! Oh boy, more crummy gear for me to put in my chest back home so I can come back to the island next week. But wait, if I make it out of here alive to store this poor noob’s crummy gear, that means I’d still have my crummy gear from last time, so why would I need theirs? To make a paltry sum of cash selling it back to them so they can come back to the island? Really?
And what is this ridiculous cycle all for? So you can PvP for the chance to fully loot a bunch of crummy gear? That sounds entertaining and enticing to you? I will repeat myself. If the rewards will only end up being garbage loot, then what’s the point of looting at all? Again, PvP with no meaningful gear looting, just like on the mainland, but with extra steps.
Well, it’s pretty simple: the guy funding the entire project with 100% authority over what Ashes is or is not, hasn’t made it a full-loot PvP game. 🤨
You will still have the same mobility and item/material decay with the existing proposed system.
Exists as is.
None of this is original - it’s UO circa 1997.
In the beginning people will come to the hell island with any garbage they can and they will try to ambush others and rob them
In the long run people will be so rich in the game that they will have many legendaries to spare and enough PvP experience, those guys will come in legendaries to the hell island
The point you are bringing is kinda like this: what matters is grinding and hoarding and never losing anything
Economically this makes sense IF you are bad or IF you don't have the right group to run with... but if you THINK you are on top of it then you will bring good gear
My point is that grinding and hoarding hurts the player experience in the long run because then the game becomes a second job
If there's arenas with 0%, 50% and 100% loot drops... people will have more fun in the 100% even if everybody start with garbage gear. In the long run the people who are better in PvP will upgrade the gear each season and the drops will get better
Hoarding is the carebearing
PvPers don't care about that, in Ultima Online almost everything I had was stolen from other players and I went to live in Bucaneer's Den (a full PvP city with no guards) using full Onyx armor and full Onyx weapons and magical weapons
See?
PvPers don't care, they steal and pillage and burn equipment for grabbing more equipment
PvPer logic is very different, I know PvPers who are gambling addicts
So you want to make a content path that only rewards the small handful of players like you who are good enough at PvP to sit at the top of the pile, and a content labyrinth for all the PvP edge-lord wannabes / gambling addicts to spin themselves through, basically just so you can have people to murder for fun in your awesome gear that you stole from someone else just because you managed to kill them one time?
The people coming to fight you will almost always have worse gear than you. If they didn’t, why would they be fighting for your gear? So you won’t care about the gear at that point, you’ll just be doing it to get relatively easy PvP kills in your special little area that doesn’t have almost anyone threatening you in good gear. You want to create a system that allows you the chance to get to the top and lord over anyone who’s simple-minded enough to think if they spend another week’s worth of resources doing an island run, then maybe, just maybe, they’ll hit the big time and catch you with your pants down.
This just seems like the kind of system that either needs to be the basis of the game or not in the game at all. It’s very extreme, and in my opinion, a waste of virtual real-estate, considering the entire map will be traversable with no instanced islands in between landmasses.
I think you need to take a little step back. Yeesh. The initial suggestion came from a place of thinking about what might be good for the game. You clearly have some weird personal baggage-laden agenda that is clouding your view. Weird.
gatherables are easier to acquire. gear will take months T_T that's what ur not getting.
for full loot u need gear to be easily acquired. and if gear is easily acquired it will destroy other systems in aoc that are there and were designed considering gear will not easily be acquired. so its not as simple as adding such island...you would need to change many other things as well.
its not even gonna help the economy. people dropping level 10 gear that no one wants lmao or npc bought gear.
I'm not opposed to the idea maybe 1 or 2 years after the game is out. adding some items that can only be acquired in that area and only in that area. otherwise going there is pointless
I was mostly referring to the person I quoted, who seems to take an odd degree of pride in insulting and dismissing the opinions of anyone who doesn’t completely agree with their PvP preferences. So forgive me for being a bit harsh. The quote you picked out of my post is a fairly accurate reiteration of the situation @Arya_Yeshe just now described themselves being in during UO. Top of the food chain with the vast majority of other players in the system wearing worse gear, logically making the majority of fights fairly easy. They called some the players in this system gambling addicts, I assume IRL, I was just borrowing that from them. But really, that’s what participating in this system is, right? Especially if you never make it to the top but consistently throw away investments hoping you will. That’s the picture which they themselves just now painted. Do you not agree?
I can see from your posts that you’re primarily focused on finding a way to keep cycling new gear into the game. That is appreciable. I still don’t think this is the best way to do so, primarily for the reason that it would be using up dev time and world space to create a system that is highly unlikely to appear attractive to enough players in a PvX game for the gear-sink to function at a noticeable enough level or for the content to entertain enough players to make the investment worthwhile.
How exactly will gear take "months" to acquire? If that is the case and crafters are responsible for making BIS gear where exactly is the demand for gear going to come from?
While we don't know how gear in Ashes will work, literally no one in Archeage ever got fully geared out. Everyone always had better gear to strive for - and all of that gear required crafters.
I would happily wager that the only way gear in Ashes won't take "months" to acquire is if you settle for less than the best you can get.
You're presuming that a gatherer can/will only gather leather. If the demand is for something else, why would they keep gathering leather? They'd go and gather the other material instead. This keeps them relevant without having to go Full Loot.
I couldn't find the reference in the couple of minutes that I spent looking for it, but I remember them saying that items are a component in crafting the next tier up, so presumably there'll be a constant demand for all the earlier crafted items, so that the later ones can also be created. This keeps the leather relevant without having to go Full Loot.
Full Loot isn't necessary in Ashes.
Full loot pvp is just dumb in a mmo.
Exactly. Some people here seem to have very defined ideas of how different systems will work in the game when we haven't seen a single thing regarding them. Stated intentions and goals change as development continues, we have seen this already with the stated changes regarding flagging on the open sea.
I have been following for a few years and really enjoy the development process, I think the rigid way in which some people are considering suggestions is strange.
Like this kind of statement. Regardless of your personal feelings towards a system, this is just demonstrably not true. Two of the most successful MMORPGs ever are games with full loot components. I personally am not even that bothered about partaking in full loot activities and spend most of my time in non-full loot areas in games like Albion Online. However, I recognise that there is a significant player base that does like that type of gameplay and it just struck me that making a single island of around 50 sqkm in a 1200sqkm game to appeal to those types of players may be beneficial for the game and its success.
A "Full loot" area is just one step further than what is already in the game. You can already attack anyone anywhere (an aspect that I honestly think is a mistake) and take the contents of one inventory. Full loot zones would just allow you to also take the other inventory after a trash rate as well.