So when you say "I really wish Intrepid settles on a system that satisfies everyone in this equation.", you accept the "remove BHs completely and tune the corruption all the way up" solution too?
Nope, I'd hate that. It not only removes 99.9% of non-event-based owpvp, but also removes a system that I think has great potential for both pvp and socialization.
Your addition with how the BH could identify the original user is nice. But what are those items?
Resources like sticks and rocks and rare mushrooms? Or intermediate products? The intermediate products actually should be transported via caravans but what is the incentive to use them if corruption protects the solo mule more?
Just anything that the green player drops, but it wouldn't autostack with other similar resources in the Red's inventory and they'd definitely drop from the Red if the BH kills them. Ideally they wouldn't drop if greens kill the Red, but there's a ton of abuse potential with that kind of mechanic, so it would have to be tested and addressed properly, but I do think that with a proper design this mechanic would lead to fewer "greens gang up on a red" situations and would instead only support the BH system even more. And considering that the "greens>red" interaction has been complained before, I think this would be a way to address even that issue.
I would say the only thing i explicitly dislike about Ashes currently would be profession level progression not being directly bound to class level progression. Which could open up possibilities of "exploiting" the system with low class level master Gatherers/crafters.
Can you explain what you mean by exploiting? I am failing to understand the problem you are suggesting.
Send in an army of level 1 gatherers to strip a nodes resources. Can't kill them due to massive corruption difference.
Actually, how on earth does one defend against an 'army' of any resource strippers, of any level? Nodes can be 'attacked' by node strippers and I see very little ways of defending the node without incurring corruption. These 'attacks' apparently have longer lasting effects on the environment IIRC, adding to the damage to the node.
Of an equal level, you'd get far less corruption. But indeed, this is a major concern in general. I would hope that mayor's could declare non citizens as not allowed to gather if resources are becoming scarce. So if a non citizen begins gathering in the node, they become flagged for PvP
I'm torn on the corruption / BH discussion---I'd need more information. But some of the discussion seems a bit premature since the system isn't solidified yet---
From my perspective I played on a pvp server in WoW since vanilla. So I saw when there was no punishment at all for ganking/griefing. Then when they instituted dishonorable kills that did help---except for people who didn't care about ranking, lol. the realm forums, mIRC, and zone chat provided a place for people to talk about griefers...and people started to become known on the server for it. Hunting parties would form---this seems to be a primitive form of BH. But it definitely I feel fostered realm community
I am a huge fan of world pvp--it adds an element of danger, mystery, and challenge to what would otherwise could be a more sterile experience. That being said...I don't want to feel on my toes 24/7...I could see how that would be stressful for some players.
I would say the only thing i explicitly dislike about Ashes currently would be profession level progression not being directly bound to class level progression. Which could open up possibilities of "exploiting" the system with low class level master Gatherers/crafters.
Can you explain what you mean by exploiting? I am failing to understand the problem you are suggesting.
Send in an army of level 1 gatherers to strip a nodes resources. Can't kill them due to massive corruption difference.
Actually, how on earth does one defend against an 'army' of any resource strippers, of any level? Nodes can be 'attacked' by node strippers and I see very little ways of defending the node without incurring corruption. These 'attacks' apparently have longer lasting effects on the environment IIRC, adding to the damage to the node.
I made a post about this.
The solution is - after a certain threshhold is met of nodes being removed - a guardian of sorts spawns. High level NPC that only aggros on anyone gathering. Defeating guardian will require a group of 8 players MINIMUM.
This NPC aggro range is huge and will beeline to anyone gathering and attack. It will not attack random players moving by it. It will defend itself if attacked.
{UPK} United Player Killer - All your loot belongs to us.
You gave as example recently players running out from the safety of the town just a little bit to taunt others into PvP and that they done this for hours. This is how the game placed the agency on the players. Each was doing this activity as long as it was fun.
And I'm almost sure that there'll be a few freeholds that have the same kind of interaction (considering that you can't be attacked on your freehold). L2's cities let you do way less stuff than the freeholds will, so those who stayed within them not participating in any other content barely did anything else (mainly trading and crafting, if they were supported by farmers). So Ashes is already providing a much broader choice of content that you can participate in w/o even walking outside of a particular location.
There is no way to balance the corruption to satisfy all players. Even if we split them in 3 categories: pure PvE, PvX and PvP, the transition is smooth and any balance will end up splitting the PvX group in two where some will request harsher penalties and others more lenient ones.
Having auto-flagged PvP pockets in a PvE (harsh corruption) environment is a better solution as it gives agency to both attacker and victim. They both decided to enter (or not leave) that place.
This is already the case with the open seas and node ruins (and we might even get more, considering the trend). Corruption is already a pretty big threat to those who attack greens, so anyone who just wants to kill as many people as possible would probably go sailing or travel the world in the search of ruins (or obviously just fucking join any kind of war between any two groups of people).
I seen a post saying the BH were added after being requested by players as a safety net if the corruption is not doing a good enough job. That means the corruption is supposed to allow a higher risk/pain onto the attacked players and the BH are supposed to move that treshold and keep the players safe.
The problem is that this does not prevent the attack to happen. It will only if the attacker knows the density of bounty hunters in the area. Their presence would increase the safety of a zone for players who want to be protected. It would be like a variable corruption which changes based on how players login and move in the game. But the game still has to transmit this information to both PvP ready and PvP reluctant players.
Like you said, rn BHs don't do anything to alleviate the event of a green dying. I think that there should be a system tied to BHs that helps those green victims get back to their pre-death state. It could be an xp gaining boost, a gear repair discount (ideally tied to a bonus for the crafter that helped repair it) or a bonus to their artisan profession.
Obviously this still doesn't prevent the death itself, but the whole point of open world pvp is to let people kill each other, but this way at least the victim loses less stuff (or in other words, time). And if we make green loot an unstackable item that drops first from a PKer and has the name of the victim on it - the BHs will be able to return it to the victim if they manage to catch and kill the PKer.
And imo this kind of system would allow for a bit more lenient corruption gain values, because it would lead to more PKers (satisfying those kinds of people) which leads to more BHs (satisfying the pvp white knights), while not removing as many greens from the game (and also tying them tighter into the game's community, because they will have to interact with way more people now).
But I'm almost sure that at the end of testing Intrepid will just remove BHs completely and tune the corruption all the way up.
the thought of a BH returning items to players.... FUCKING LULZ
that aint gonna happen. Most people signing up as a BH are ppl who were interested in PKing for loot. But because of the corruption system - deterred them. Now how can they PK and still get loot? Oh yeah, be a BH.
if I'm a BH and recovered your loot - that shit is mine. you can buy it off me or get gud and not die. not my problem. There will be many people like this.
BH is there to prevent griefing an area or those spawn camping, it should have ZERO mechanics dealing with the green victim. That's not their job or purpose. It's even in the damn name. All they get is an indicator of a PKer is active nearby - go make a play and chase the Pker down. that's it.
Too many BH in the game --- ya gonna be disppointed when there isnt much content to do, cause some BH prolly killed the PK by the time you arrive.
{UPK} United Player Killer - All your loot belongs to us.
the thought of a BH returning items to players.... FUCKING LULZ
that aint gonna happen. Most people signing up as a BH are ppl who were interested in PKing for loot. But because of the corruption system - deterred them. Now how can they PK and still get loot? Oh yeah, be a BH.
if I'm a BH and recovered your loot - that shit is mine. you can buy it off me or get gud and not die. not my problem. There will be many people like this.
EZ fix. You don't return the stuff you got from the PK - you lose the BH status. It could be just after one failed return or several, but still.
BH is there to prevent griefing an area or those spawn camping, it should have ZERO mechanics dealing with the green victim. That's not their job or purpose. It's even in the damn name. All they get is an indicator of a PKer is active nearby - go make a play and chase the Pker down. that's it.
Too many BH in the game --- ya gonna be disppointed when there isnt much content to do, cause some BH prolly killed the PK by the time you arrive.
This is just our difference in what we want from this system. I want BHs to be the proper white knights for the greens. If we assume some "sheriff" that gives out those bounties, all you need to do to justify the system I suggested would be just saying "the sheriff won't pay you unless you return the loots, because it's the loot of the people that pay his salary". Hell, add some reputation system to that where you can return some loot to earn some rep so that you could keep some juicier loot later on and you have yourself a more involved system rather than just "BHs, go kill reds or some shit".
And as for "there's too many BHs and not enough PKs", this is exactly why I said that my suggestion would allow for lesser corruption penalties, because the impact on greens would be also lessened. I had an additional mechanic to support it when I initially came up with this idea, but that's all just testing and tweaking.
In other words, I just want the system to be better (and it might already be, who knows) and I just think that it's possible to make it better for all 3 sides and not just either greens or reds.
I would say the only thing i explicitly dislike about Ashes currently would be profession level progression not being directly bound to class level progression. Which could open up possibilities of "exploiting" the system with low class level master Gatherers/crafters.
Can you explain what you mean by exploiting? I am failing to understand the problem you are suggesting.
Send in an army of level 1 gatherers to strip a nodes resources. Can't kill them due to massive corruption difference.
Actually, how on earth does one defend against an 'army' of any resource strippers, of any level? Nodes can be 'attacked' by node strippers and I see very little ways of defending the node without incurring corruption. These 'attacks' apparently have longer lasting effects on the environment IIRC, adding to the damage to the node.
I made a post about this.
The solution is - after a certain threshhold is met of nodes being removed - a guardian of sorts spawns. High level NPC that only aggros on anyone gathering. Defeating guardian will require a group of 8 players MINIMUM.
This NPC aggro range is huge and will beeline to anyone gathering and attack. It will not attack random players moving by it. It will defend itself if attacked.
Still a negative for the nodes citizens. But at least that sort of deals with individual griefers
There should be very little BH because there should be very little PKing. If Corruption system is good/strong enough - we shouldnt be seeing much of it.
With that said - Incentivizing BH would also discourage PKers/PKing
{UPK} United Player Killer - All your loot belongs to us.
I would say the only thing i explicitly dislike about Ashes currently would be profession level progression not being directly bound to class level progression. Which could open up possibilities of "exploiting" the system with low class level master Gatherers/crafters.
Can you explain what you mean by exploiting? I am failing to understand the problem you are suggesting.
Send in an army of level 1 gatherers to strip a nodes resources. Can't kill them due to massive corruption difference.
Actually, how on earth does one defend against an 'army' of any resource strippers, of any level? Nodes can be 'attacked' by node strippers and I see very little ways of defending the node without incurring corruption. These 'attacks' apparently have longer lasting effects on the environment IIRC, adding to the damage to the node.
I made a post about this.
The solution is - after a certain threshhold is met of nodes being removed - a guardian of sorts spawns. High level NPC that only aggros on anyone gathering. Defeating guardian will require a group of 8 players MINIMUM.
This NPC aggro range is huge and will beeline to anyone gathering and attack. It will not attack random players moving by it. It will defend itself if attacked.
Still a negative for the nodes citizens. But at least that sort of deals with individual griefers
Mother earth dont give a fuck about it's node citizens. These guardians can be spawn even by the citizens themselves. Mother earth looking out for herself.
{UPK} United Player Killer - All your loot belongs to us.
There should be very little BH because there should be very little PKing. If Corruption system is good/strong enough - we shouldnt be seeing much of it.
With that said - Incentivizing BH would also discourage PKers/PKing
And again, we just disagree on that particular point. The main purpose of having fewer PKers is to provide a better gaming scene for the greens. But if you can counteract the PKers' influence on greens, you can potentially have more PKers in the game w/o completely ruining it for the greens. And I personally think that this can be achieved with the help of BHs.
No factions - without them we can't have open world pvp without penalties. It would have been nice to have actual reds 24/7 than have everyone being green.
Corruption is a punishment. So if bots are taking all the nodes then you have to get punished to get rid of them. We all know there will be bots, lots of them.
No factions - without them we can't have open world pvp without penalties. It would have been nice to have actual reds 24/7 than have everyone being green.
Corruption is a punishment. So if bots are taking all the nodes then you have to get punished to get rid of them. We all know there will be bots, lots of them.
paid subscription deters bot accounts and most importantly - ACTIVE GM's will nuke out 99% of bot activity that gets reported.
What other games failed was active GM on servers around the clock.
{UPK} United Player Killer - All your loot belongs to us.
I would say the only thing i explicitly dislike about Ashes currently would be profession level progression not being directly bound to class level progression. Which could open up possibilities of "exploiting" the system with low class level master Gatherers/crafters.
Can you explain what you mean by exploiting? I am failing to understand the problem you are suggesting.
Send in an army of level 1 gatherers to strip a nodes resources. Can't kill them due to massive corruption difference.
Actually, how on earth does one defend against an 'army' of any resource strippers, of any level? Nodes can be 'attacked' by node strippers and I see very little ways of defending the node without incurring corruption. These 'attacks' apparently have longer lasting effects on the environment IIRC, adding to the damage to the node.
I made a post about this.
The solution is - after a certain threshhold is met of nodes being removed - a guardian of sorts spawns. High level NPC that only aggros on anyone gathering. Defeating guardian will require a group of 8 players MINIMUM.
This NPC aggro range is huge and will beeline to anyone gathering and attack. It will not attack random players moving by it. It will defend itself if attacked.
Still a negative for the nodes citizens. But at least that sort of deals with individual griefers
Mother earth dont give a fuck about it's node citizens. These guardians can be spawn even by the citizens themselves. Mother earth looking out for herself.
Fun lore, but not a great solution for a games mechanic.
So when you say "I really wish Intrepid settles on a system that satisfies everyone in this equation.", you accept the "remove BHs completely and tune the corruption all the way up" solution too?
Nope, I'd hate that. It not only removes 99.9% of non-event-based owpvp, but also removes a system that I think has great potential for both pvp and socialization.
Your addition with how the BH could identify the original user is nice. But what are those items?
Resources like sticks and rocks and rare mushrooms? Or intermediate products? The intermediate products actually should be transported via caravans but what is the incentive to use them if corruption protects the solo mule more?
Just anything that the green player drops, but it wouldn't autostack with other similar resources in the Red's inventory and they'd definitely drop from the Red if the BH kills them. Ideally they wouldn't drop if greens kill the Red, but there's a ton of abuse potential with that kind of mechanic, so it would have to be tested and addressed properly, but I do think that with a proper design this mechanic would lead to fewer "greens gang up on a red" situations and would instead only support the BH system even more. And considering that the "greens>red" interaction has been complained before, I think this would be a way to address even that issue.
IMO the game should try to discourage the feeling that the resources belong to the player as soon as he picked them up from the environment. Only after the resources reached the safety of a storage should be considered as belonging to the player.
The game already has integrated the possibility to get back 50% of the resources instantly if the attacked player flags himself before he dies. Trying to keep all 100% is a sign of greed. It is justified if those were gathered over a long time, like a few hours, but why would a weak player stay away from the city with valuable resources so long? In AoC the city is just 5 minutes away.
What we can add is a two step corruption, 1st when the player is killed and 2nd when the resources are picked up from the ashes. Maybe even inspecting the content could already trigger that. Also defending the ashes of a player until he comes to retrieve his stuff could be rewarded.
But the game doesn't want to be that protective. Wiki say "These ash piles are immediately lootable by any player.[63] Player flagging is not triggered by looting.[12]". If flagging is not triggered, corruption should not be triggered either.
September 12. 2022: Being naked can also be used to bring a skilled artisan to different freeholds... Don't summon family!
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
IMO the game should try to discourage the feeling that the resources belong to the player as soon as he picked them up from the environment. Only after the resources reached the safety of a storage should be considered as belonging to the player.
But you can still lose the resources in your storage through node sieges, so there's really no differentiation there. Which is why I think that as soon as you gather/pick up some resource - it's yours until taken or traded away.
The game already has integrated the possibility to get back 50% of the resources instantly if the attacked player flags himself before he dies. Trying to keep all 100% is a sign of greed. It is justified if those were gathered over a long time, like a few hours, but why would a weak player stay away from the city with valuable resources so long? In AoC the city is just 5 minutes away.
I think it's about the value of time more so than the value of the resources themselves. Or, well, at least that's how I see it. If I spent an hour or two farming some juicy location deep in a dungeon (be it mobs or rare gatherables there) and then I get PKed and lose a big chunk of the resources, my immediate reaction would be "a shit I wasted a ton of time". And while I'm a person who would immediately go and try fuck that PKer up, I'd assume most (or at least majority) of true greens would just feel bad about their, already limited, playtime being wasted by another player.
And with travel times being longer than just "tp here then tp there", if you tell all greens to just run to the city every time they pick up an item - they'll tell you "you're crazy" And that's not even considering that leaving your location usually means giving it up to someone else, so even if you do go to the city often you'll be losing out on more of the same resource (especially if it's rare and only has a few limited spawn points). Flagging up and fighting back removes that part of the equation and obviously lets you lose less stuff if you die, which is why I like this mechanic.
But I'm sure you've seen several threads where people complained about being constantly killed or having only 10 minutes a day to play the game or anything along those lines (or just not wanting to pvp if they're not in the mood like Dygz does). To those people the thought of "protect your spot and you'll get to enjoy the game more" seems to be as alien as "I want everything to be instanced" for me. And I feel like giving them some potential insurance for the time spent, while also letting the PKers kill a few more people a day, would go a long way. Though those PKers would still have to be caught first, so it's not a 100% insurance.
I don't think Intrepid realizes how important combat is and how much it matters to people first coming into contact with the game (be it an early alpha, people don't understand and don't care).
They could deliver on every system they promised and more, if the combat isn't top tier, it's all for nothing.
The fact they're still asking for stuff like ''stamina or no stamina'' is very worrying.
On one side I understand that
1) combat, ironically is one of the easiest to crate aspects of the game comapred to systems like the nodes function and sieges, sea travel and combat, raids and dungeons, castle sieges, etc and it makes sense why they would focus on it towards the end
2) combat and class design (on which combat depends) is one of those things you need to think more about so it's better to give it 1-2 years of deep design and brainstorming and them implement in more detail, rather than jump into it from the start
but still, I don't think Intrepid realizes the risk here and I'm worried they will lose more and more support if they release pre-alpha combat the way it is (it's one of the main reasons why the november stream was so poorly received).
People don't understand this is a pre-alpha.
Open development like Intrepid is doing is nearly unseen.
Most MMO developers release ''alphas'' when their game is nearly finished and do it as a publicity move, they don't have actual development alphas, so people don't even understand what alpha means, which is even less relevant since they don't care and judge the game first sight as it is as if it would never change in the years of development to come.
And the first thing they judge the game by, besides first sight graphics and models is the combat.
And the combat better be in far better shape in the future streams involving it and in very good shape when alpha 2 arrives, otherwise it iwll bleed more and more support.
I do not entirely buy the "it's in alpha" position that is the go-to when things don't quite look right. They still decide what to show everyone. Stuff like the moon looks garbage is understandable. "We threw it up in the sky as a placeholder to make sure it moves around first." or whatever they want to say.
For combat - you can mostly determine what combat will feel like when watching what they have provided. And for anyone who has game design programs and has dabbled in it, you know what's required, so you look at what they made and think they really stopped short, why?.....They have not elaborated on what they wish to achieve visually, either.
To give an example - If you take a game like Pantheon and demonstrate their combat, which is basically stand in one spot and auto attack and press buttons once in awhile, and have beside it Ashes of Creation combat, you can easily tell the difference between the two intentions, and get the "jist" of what it will be like, based on the approach taken.
Similarly, you can pair up Archeage 2's teaser trailer (pre-alpha development?), beside Ashes of Creation combat, and once again, immediately notice a difference. Archeage 2 (apparently further behind in development) was able to demonstrate the feel of their games combat, and while this is also the case with Ashes, it doesn't appear to be as enjoyable to watch.
For a game that is focusing on combat, you would think there would be advances made, and more focus given to this aspect of the game. Even if they had 2 models fighting in combat, and said, this is what we are going for but we have to do this with everything else, so right now you will only see this happen for these 2 models and it will be very basic for everything else, because they havent added all the animations yet for other models...hit boxes...blah blah blah...watch combat tutorials for UE5 and you will see how long it takes to come up with this stuff.
We had a ranger combat demo of left mouse button mashing, Archer was more involved, and the cleric also had left mouse button mashing...a few combat abilities thrown into the mix.... so, if not really a combat demo...we were shown a status effects demo... and if thats the case, they definitely havent been working on combat much.
So all of this makes it a little hard for me to buy the "its in alpha" excuse.
The fact they're still asking for stuff like ''stamina or no stamina'' is very worrying.
In this particular example I would agree. If all classes are going to have access to dodge, block (if they equip a shield), and potentially parry mechanics, then what you're also saying is to some degree that's a fundamental part of combat that's relevant to everyone.
Something that pervasive should really have been thought through and decided much earlier. It makes me feel as a prospective player that they're not taking combat seriously.
With that said, what I saw from the fighter, ranger, and cleric showcases I was actually very happy with directionally.
The problem is it's challenging to make accurate estimate of what combat will actually be from showcases of lvl 15 characters against mobs that haven’t been tuned yet, and fundamental combat mechanics are still unfinished/undecided. Basically, what we saw is a very rough draft.
On top of that, because your abilities depend on where you spend ability points, one cleric's combat is going to (sometimes) look different than another’s.
The game already has integrated the possibility to get back 50% of the resources instantly if the attacked player flags himself before he dies. Trying to keep all 100% is a sign of greed. It is justified if those were gathered over a long time, like a few hours, but why would a weak player stay away from the city with valuable resources so long? In AoC the city is just 5 minutes away.
I think it's about the value of time more so than the value of the resources themselves. Or, well, at least that's how I see it. If I spent an hour or two farming some juicy location deep in a dungeon (be it mobs or rare gatherables there) and then I get PKed and lose a big chunk of the resources, my immediate reaction would be "a shit I wasted a ton of time". And while I'm a person who would immediately go and try fuck that PKer up, I'd assume most (or at least majority) of true greens would just feel bad about their, already limited, playtime being wasted by another player.
And with travel times being longer than just "tp here then tp there", if you tell all greens to just run to the city every time they pick up an item - they'll tell you "you're crazy" And that's not even considering that leaving your location usually means giving it up to someone else, so even if you do go to the city often you'll be losing out on more of the same resource (especially if it's rare and only has a few limited spawn points). Flagging up and fighting back removes that part of the equation and obviously lets you lose less stuff if you die, which is why I like this mechanic.
But I'm sure you've seen several threads where people complained about being constantly killed or having only 10 minutes a day to play the game or anything along those lines (or just not wanting to pvp if they're not in the mood like Dygz does). To those people the thought of "protect your spot and you'll get to enjoy the game more" seems to be as alien as "I want everything to be instanced" for me. And I feel like giving them some potential insurance for the time spent, while also letting the PKers kill a few more people a day, would go a long way. Though those PKers would still have to be caught first, so it's not a 100% insurance.
You cannot make mmos great again for those who have only 10 minutes a day to play the game
The minimum time/week should be 16h
A change which somewhat surprised me is that ancient road system which allows fast travel. Where is that located? Is floating in the sky like a highway? Can you transport resources on them? Can you pvp if you meet another player?
But back to the BH viability. They should not be able in 100% of cases to take and give back the resources lost by the green because the PK-ers will have 0 reason to become corrupt.
How do you balance the success rate?
And once that is done, it still means that some greens will not get their resources back.
September 12. 2022: Being naked can also be used to bring a skilled artisan to different freeholds... Don't summon family!
I'm not about to be a BH and kill a PvPer who might be my hard counter to appease a green who refused to fight. It would purely be for the thrill and challenge - after all, a red player will be a guaranteed pvp player.
The corruption system already protects green players. I have no need to body guard or rob the rich to feed the poor.
I'm not about to be a BH and kill a PvPer who might be my hard counter to appease a green who refused to fight. It would purely be for the thrill and challenge - after all, a red player will be a guaranteed pvp player.
The corruption system already protects green players. I have no need to body guard or rob the rich to feed the poor.
There's also the incentive of reward by killing corrupted as a bounty hunter.
But back to the BH viability. They should not be able in 100% of cases to take and give back the resources lost by the green because the PK-ers will have 0 reason to become corrupt.
How do you balance the success rate?
And once that is done, it still means that some greens will not get their resources back.
This would obviously have to be tested. I would personally tweak the amount of corruption gained and corruption lost relative to XP gained. And then counterbalance that against the common distance between any given mob and the nearest node center.
And if the design of how the bounties get given out (if I understand it correctly that is) remains the same, then BHs would have to get their targets at a tavern or a certain NPC only in a lvl4 military node. At which point there's definitely some amount of distance that a BH would have to travel from said tavern/npc to the PKer. And the time of that travel would have to determine how quickly the PKer can remove their corruption through grind.
Military NPCs could give immediate info about any new PKer and might even make announcements in "BH chat" about a new PKer, so anyone in the vicinity of the NPC could quickly get the bounty from them and try to catch the PKer before they remove their corruption. Tavern-based bounties could maybe only work if the PKer was above some corruption threshold (or a PK count one), because taverns would most likely be closer to the killer.
And we could have that only a BH kill would drop the victims resources rather than just any kill, which imo would strengthen the BHs' reputation amongst the people and would decrease the amount of greens just attacking the Red (because some maniacs consider that a bad thing). And again though, the BH still gotta kill the PKer in order to get the resources, which is never assured.
This is just the surface-lvl first-thought kind of design, I'm sure it could be refined into something much better or there might even be able a better way to satisfy all 3 sides of this equation.
I'm not about to be a BH and kill a PvPer who might be my hard counter to appease a green who refused to fight. It would purely be for the thrill and challenge - after all, a red player will be a guaranteed pvp player.
The corruption system already protects green players. I have no need to body guard or rob the rich to feed the poor.
It's not about appeasement, it's about the system itself promoting help to others rather than just being a basic bitch system that only promotes killing. You still get the thrill and you still get to fight and even compete against other BHs for the kill, but on top of all that you also get to help others.
I don't mind helping others but you need to realise someone has turned red because someone else didn't turn purple.
In the Grand scheme of things, I don't feel a free loader should be helped. It means a lot of time drain when there will never be recompense.
I realise there are bounty rewards but that is par for the course. I don't see the need to pass off any loot back to a free loader.
And I addressed this before too. All it takes to justify what I'm suggesting is saying in lore that BHs can only operate because those "freeloaders" pay your "salaries". And if you don't return their stuff - you're a shitty BH who doesn't deserve the rewards related to that job.
It's not like only BHs can kill a red. I'm sure that green victims will just yell in chat "there's a Red in this location", so if you're just running somewhere close as a random dude - you're always free to just go kill the Red and get all the loot for yourself.
But a "bounty" system supposes that someone's paying for that bounty. And the game could just say that the greens are the ones doing that. And it is kinda already the case. Taxes collected from those "freeloaders" support the whole system, so in a way what I'm saying is already the case.
I've said many times for 'Greens to kill reds' and many times I've been lambasted for it. I call these players free loaders because they simply will not pvp under any circumstance.
Sure, they will pay taxes and probably create the best armour but we will also pay taxes and create the best armour.
I'm not sure how often a bounty hunter will be required but the game is long term in all hopes. Doesn't matter if I complete bounty hunter tree in one year or ten years really.
Sure, they will pay taxes and probably create the best armour but we will also pay taxes and create the best armour.
Yeah, except there will definitely be way more of those greens than the pvpers and most definitely more than of the BHs. So, if anything, we're the freeloaders. We need them to support the game in a big enough quantity so that we could just go kill each other for fun. Which is why I think that a single mechanic that supports them would be nice.
And again, I'm talking about this mechanic in the context of more frequent PKs, so even those greens do just never fight - they'll still die somewhat often.
They have systems that support them. We will protect caravans, nodes, ships, guild halls and whatever else those players will require help with.
Pretty much all of those are just pvp encounters, which makes them the main pvp content of the game, so while, yes, they do support greens in a way, they're mainly pvpers' domain.
I do not see why they should also get all the resources back after a bounty hunter has earned those resources.
The only ones who "earned" them are the greens themselves. The red then stole them through a forced kill and the BH then used that forced kill for their own benefit (double btw, if you don't return the resources).
That's like saying "well I stole this money from another robber, so I definitely earned this money". Though if you do think that, well then we just have differing povs (as if this wasn't already apparent )
There's meant to be resources sinks and pvp is a big one.
The only resource sink involved in a kill of a player is the gear decay, because you'll need to use mats to repair it, instead of using those mats for another craft. The loot itself won't be sunk (unless we're talking caravans). It's just a shift of possession.
Comments
Of an equal level, you'd get far less corruption. But indeed, this is a major concern in general. I would hope that mayor's could declare non citizens as not allowed to gather if resources are becoming scarce. So if a non citizen begins gathering in the node, they become flagged for PvP
From my perspective I played on a pvp server in WoW since vanilla. So I saw when there was no punishment at all for ganking/griefing. Then when they instituted dishonorable kills that did help---except for people who didn't care about ranking, lol. the realm forums, mIRC, and zone chat provided a place for people to talk about griefers...and people started to become known on the server for it. Hunting parties would form---this seems to be a primitive form of BH. But it definitely I feel fostered realm community
I am a huge fan of world pvp--it adds an element of danger, mystery, and challenge to what would otherwise could be a more sterile experience. That being said...I don't want to feel on my toes 24/7...I could see how that would be stressful for some players.
I made a post about this.
The solution is - after a certain threshhold is met of nodes being removed - a guardian of sorts spawns. High level NPC that only aggros on anyone gathering. Defeating guardian will require a group of 8 players MINIMUM.
This NPC aggro range is huge and will beeline to anyone gathering and attack. It will not attack random players moving by it. It will defend itself if attacked.
the thought of a BH returning items to players.... FUCKING LULZ
that aint gonna happen. Most people signing up as a BH are ppl who were interested in PKing for loot. But because of the corruption system - deterred them. Now how can they PK and still get loot? Oh yeah, be a BH.
if I'm a BH and recovered your loot - that shit is mine. you can buy it off me or get gud and not die. not my problem. There will be many people like this.
BH is there to prevent griefing an area or those spawn camping, it should have ZERO mechanics dealing with the green victim. That's not their job or purpose. It's even in the damn name. All they get is an indicator of a PKer is active nearby - go make a play and chase the Pker down. that's it.
Too many BH in the game --- ya gonna be disppointed when there isnt much content to do, cause some BH prolly killed the PK by the time you arrive.
And as for "there's too many BHs and not enough PKs", this is exactly why I said that my suggestion would allow for lesser corruption penalties, because the impact on greens would be also lessened. I had an additional mechanic to support it when I initially came up with this idea, but that's all just testing and tweaking.
In other words, I just want the system to be better (and it might already be, who knows) and I just think that it's possible to make it better for all 3 sides and not just either greens or reds.
Still a negative for the nodes citizens. But at least that sort of deals with individual griefers
With that said - Incentivizing BH would also discourage PKers/PKing
Mother earth dont give a fuck about it's node citizens. These guardians can be spawn even by the citizens themselves. Mother earth looking out for herself.
Corruption is a punishment. So if bots are taking all the nodes then you have to get punished to get rid of them. We all know there will be bots, lots of them.
paid subscription deters bot accounts and most importantly - ACTIVE GM's will nuke out 99% of bot activity that gets reported.
What other games failed was active GM on servers around the clock.
Fun lore, but not a great solution for a games mechanic.
The game already has integrated the possibility to get back 50% of the resources instantly if the attacked player flags himself before he dies. Trying to keep all 100% is a sign of greed. It is justified if those were gathered over a long time, like a few hours, but why would a weak player stay away from the city with valuable resources so long? In AoC the city is just 5 minutes away.
What we can add is a two step corruption, 1st when the player is killed and 2nd when the resources are picked up from the ashes. Maybe even inspecting the content could already trigger that. Also defending the ashes of a player until he comes to retrieve his stuff could be rewarded.
But the game doesn't want to be that protective. Wiki say "These ash piles are immediately lootable by any player.[63] Player flagging is not triggered by looting.[12]". If flagging is not triggered, corruption should not be triggered either.
And with travel times being longer than just "tp here then tp there", if you tell all greens to just run to the city every time they pick up an item - they'll tell you "you're crazy"
But I'm sure you've seen several threads where people complained about being constantly killed or having only 10 minutes a day to play the game or anything along those lines (or just not wanting to pvp if they're not in the mood like Dygz does). To those people the thought of "protect your spot and you'll get to enjoy the game more" seems to be as alien as "I want everything to be instanced" for me. And I feel like giving them some potential insurance for the time spent, while also letting the PKers kill a few more people a day, would go a long way. Though those PKers would still have to be caught first, so it's not a 100% insurance.
I do not entirely buy the "it's in alpha" position that is the go-to when things don't quite look right. They still decide what to show everyone. Stuff like the moon looks garbage is understandable. "We threw it up in the sky as a placeholder to make sure it moves around first." or whatever they want to say.
For combat - you can mostly determine what combat will feel like when watching what they have provided. And for anyone who has game design programs and has dabbled in it, you know what's required, so you look at what they made and think they really stopped short, why?.....They have not elaborated on what they wish to achieve visually, either.
To give an example - If you take a game like Pantheon and demonstrate their combat, which is basically stand in one spot and auto attack and press buttons once in awhile, and have beside it Ashes of Creation combat, you can easily tell the difference between the two intentions, and get the "jist" of what it will be like, based on the approach taken.
Similarly, you can pair up Archeage 2's teaser trailer (pre-alpha development?), beside Ashes of Creation combat, and once again, immediately notice a difference. Archeage 2 (apparently further behind in development) was able to demonstrate the feel of their games combat, and while this is also the case with Ashes, it doesn't appear to be as enjoyable to watch.
For a game that is focusing on combat, you would think there would be advances made, and more focus given to this aspect of the game. Even if they had 2 models fighting in combat, and said, this is what we are going for but we have to do this with everything else, so right now you will only see this happen for these 2 models and it will be very basic for everything else, because they havent added all the animations yet for other models...hit boxes...blah blah blah...watch combat tutorials for UE5 and you will see how long it takes to come up with this stuff.
We had a ranger combat demo of left mouse button mashing, Archer was more involved, and the cleric also had left mouse button mashing...a few combat abilities thrown into the mix.... so, if not really a combat demo...we were shown a status effects demo... and if thats the case, they definitely havent been working on combat much.
So all of this makes it a little hard for me to buy the "its in alpha" excuse.
In this particular example I would agree. If all classes are going to have access to dodge, block (if they equip a shield), and potentially parry mechanics, then what you're also saying is to some degree that's a fundamental part of combat that's relevant to everyone.
Something that pervasive should really have been thought through and decided much earlier. It makes me feel as a prospective player that they're not taking combat seriously.
With that said, what I saw from the fighter, ranger, and cleric showcases I was actually very happy with directionally.
The problem is it's challenging to make accurate estimate of what combat will actually be from showcases of lvl 15 characters against mobs that haven’t been tuned yet, and fundamental combat mechanics are still unfinished/undecided. Basically, what we saw is a very rough draft.
On top of that, because your abilities depend on where you spend ability points, one cleric's combat is going to (sometimes) look different than another’s.
Right. And to that at least I would say I really liked the direction they were going with that.
Hearing from the combat team in the Dec. Dev Update was helpful. The focus on archetype identity, and how combat feels specifically, was reassuring.
The only thing I can confidently say about combat right now is that it looks interesting
You cannot make mmos great again for those who have only 10 minutes a day to play the game
The minimum time/week should be 16h
A change which somewhat surprised me is that ancient road system which allows fast travel. Where is that located? Is floating in the sky like a highway? Can you transport resources on them? Can you pvp if you meet another player?
But back to the BH viability. They should not be able in 100% of cases to take and give back the resources lost by the green because the PK-ers will have 0 reason to become corrupt.
How do you balance the success rate?
And once that is done, it still means that some greens will not get their resources back.
The corruption system already protects green players. I have no need to body guard or rob the rich to feed the poor.
There's also the incentive of reward by killing corrupted as a bounty hunter.
And if the design of how the bounties get given out (if I understand it correctly that is) remains the same, then BHs would have to get their targets at a tavern or a certain NPC only in a lvl4 military node. At which point there's definitely some amount of distance that a BH would have to travel from said tavern/npc to the PKer. And the time of that travel would have to determine how quickly the PKer can remove their corruption through grind.
Military NPCs could give immediate info about any new PKer and might even make announcements in "BH chat" about a new PKer, so anyone in the vicinity of the NPC could quickly get the bounty from them and try to catch the PKer before they remove their corruption. Tavern-based bounties could maybe only work if the PKer was above some corruption threshold (or a PK count one), because taverns would most likely be closer to the killer.
And we could have that only a BH kill would drop the victims resources rather than just any kill, which imo would strengthen the BHs' reputation amongst the people and would decrease the amount of greens just attacking the Red (because some maniacs consider that a bad thing). And again though, the BH still gotta kill the PKer in order to get the resources, which is never assured.
This is just the surface-lvl first-thought kind of design, I'm sure it could be refined into something much better or there might even be able a better way to satisfy all 3 sides of this equation.
In the Grand scheme of things, I don't feel a free loader should be helped. It means a lot of time drain when there will never be recompense.
I realise there are bounty rewards but that is par for the course. I don't see the need to pass off any loot back to a free loader.
It's not like only BHs can kill a red. I'm sure that green victims will just yell in chat "there's a Red in this location", so if you're just running somewhere close as a random dude - you're always free to just go kill the Red and get all the loot for yourself.
But a "bounty" system supposes that someone's paying for that bounty. And the game could just say that the greens are the ones doing that. And it is kinda already the case. Taxes collected from those "freeloaders" support the whole system, so in a way what I'm saying is already the case.
Sure, they will pay taxes and probably create the best armour but we will also pay taxes and create the best armour.
I'm not sure how often a bounty hunter will be required but the game is long term in all hopes. Doesn't matter if I complete bounty hunter tree in one year or ten years really.
And again, I'm talking about this mechanic in the context of more frequent PKs, so even those greens do just never fight - they'll still die somewhat often.
I do not see why they should also get all the resources back after a bounty hunter has earned those resources.
There's meant to be resources sinks and pvp is a big one.
That's like saying "well I stole this money from another robber, so I definitely earned this money". Though if you do think that, well then we just have differing povs (as if this wasn't already apparent