Why this say (PvP) when the majority of players that do this are Pve players?
New world was one example of that, some people go outside flagged for pvp to have some fun an extra gathering boost, but what you get is pve players pulling mobs while you trying to gather, until you leave the place because you can´t do shit, they go unflagged for pvp, that´s why i hate flagg system.
In Aoc case if he is doing mob train just kill root him or stagger and the mobs will do the rest of the job
I have to agree with some of the other comments; "the question is wrong".
A more interessting discussion would be "How to determine when, and for how long, an NPC chase a player".
Avoid the generic x distance or y time metrics, and build a more dynamic and logical reasoning into the decision making of the NPC's.
Some examples:
A guard would chase a player a short distance, before returning to his post.
A hungry wolf could be desperate, and chase you for a long time, but - give up the chase quickly if the player moved much faster than the wolf.
A wolf that recently ate could ignore the player altogether.
A single NPC could rally nearby friends to hunt down the player, using flanking when possible.
If you choose a more complex, systemic and dynamic solution, with a series of different rulesets that could be activated based on morale, health, status, type of creature, that creatures standing vs the player, it's "job", these rules should also include "abort chase" conditions, and these conditions should again contain a ruleset for when and why an NPC would switch target (aka dump agro on another player).
With this dynamic behaviour, the same creature would not react the same way every time, forcing the players to consider not only the NPC itself, but the surroundings, the situation, and the condition of the NPC.
This would most likely lead to a much more immersive gameplay experience, but at the cost of slightly more complex AI engine, and increased server load.
That is something that needs to exist. Very funny and engaging. I also want a lot of NPCs to be able to hurt eachother as well.
Great tactic for fighting crowds and using the environment.
I am not even sure how did this even make it to Dev Discussion. This topic has been multiple times mentioned, and answered by Steven. He has called this a type of griefing, he even mentioned how certain ideas are already there to prevent. And he wants this to be discouraged. Yet we are here creating comments on how it should be discouraged or encouraged. Lmao
While I do believe you are never going to eliminate the possibility to train other people. You can definitely eliminate that not any random person can just do it with no thinking, just for the sake of annoying.
On the stream atm the mobs are quite braindead, they are slower than players, they don't CC, they basically do nothing other than auto-attack and some fancy skills.
If mobs just started to CC players when players are running away from them(slow, root, whatever) or if they get a buff if they are too many packed together (ArcheAge), which increases their speed, power and what not would potentially stop the mindless training.
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Solutions to fix brainless training:
- Mobs have fix distance to reset(leash) away from their spawn area, they should not be able to follow someone indefinitely.
- Mobs should have reaction/AI to respond to someone just running around with them. Like slowing, pulling, any CC, getting buffed as more and more mobs are packed together.
- Wish there was a way to just snipe PK people running with 10 mobs behind them into your party without gaining corruption, but somehow I doubt that is a possible solution and would be abused in other forms.
- These should also prevent people to just brainlessly run through a dungeon, to get to the deeper levels without fighting their way through. (Like when Steven just ran through the entire dungeon to get to the dragon boss Lmao)
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What mobs should not do:
- If the training person dies near a group and the group is in proximity of the mobs aggro range, please do not make the mobs reset unless they reach their leash distance. It is just immersion breaking, might as well just give the mobs no AI then.
I do not mind if one group uses the environment(training) to sabotage an another group so they can annoy the enemy guild or something similar. Just have mechanics in place to prevent 1-2 players to purposely waste entire groups of people's time with no effort.
In short? No, I don’t think it should be allowed. Let’s take the question to the extreme:
Assuming training is superior for PvP because it bypasses the Corruption system and allows you to have a mass of minions fight “for you”, then logically, everyone would try and do it. If everyone is doing it, then PvP devolves into everyone training each other. And why play a summoner when you can “summon” the mobs around you?
Would you rather have PvP be everyone training on each other, or actual 1v1/GvG player versus player fights?
Training should not be allowed. The people saying it's a valid tactic have never spent 6 hours being repeatedly wiped by a handful of griefers training their raid mid way through a boss fight. Since most of Ashes content will be open world and highly contested, if you allow training, this WILL happen. Consistently.
The amount of responses with the word "Griefing" in them makes me disgusted. Is this is going to be the same old give me free loot, I dont want any challenges, I will cry to the Devs about anything hard crowd that kills all MMORPG's? Training is a solid mechanic that makes the game fun in a hard and challenging way and gives more depth to zones, those NPCS really don't like you and you are really in their agro range, is this an RPG or just an MMO? Who cares how the NPC got there, this is supposed to be Role playing, its an open box deal with it. Please bring us back to the days before we all got nerfed into thinking all hard mechanics are a form of griefing, otherwise this is just another MMORPG to have a big pop and then die within the year.
Difficulty is not making a train, difficulty is the challenge per area mobs should have. In old school there were 0 difficulty with mobs so they would be trained to speed run since it was brain dead.
Just because thinking something is weird because mobs run by you and it doesn't live up to the standard of real life does not mean a game should be balanced around that. In real life you aren't fighting dragons, seeing magic or one shotting mobs because of level and magic gear.
Things need to be balanced off design objective.
Or i simply need to stay explaining every way you can grief simply because you want things to be super realistic. Hard encounters need to be in the design of the current fight, difficulty isn't mobs are running back since someone pulled them, so they attack other players as they head back.
If you are worried about alertness of monsters, then design something where if you are spotted without killing the mob under a certain amount of time more come and reinforce the area making it harder to get in and escape.
Desire mobs to leash then attack other players when they head back in a train is a perfect way to grief people and pick up easy gear without ever pvping them. And wanting that in the game or to be made easier is pretty silly, it will 100% be used on you when you don't flag up.
You need to consider the game and all elements of the game with pvp. The consequences of being corrupted will have player use any and all means to avoid it for their own advantage and to get plenty of free gear. Mob difficulty plus training will be an issue for a lot of players when higher levels out level the mobs and can free farm players or stop them from farming an area safely without needing to dec the guild or flag.
It's one thing to want something but you need to consider all the balance of the game and how it works...
Alls fair in Love and PvP. But there will be drastic consequences for training mobs onto someone, or a party, that players name will be shouted in /Defense Chat, that players name will be immediately added to every KoS list, their Guild Leader is going to get swarmed with PM's - and they'll probably receive the well earned title of Enemy Of The State.
It should be difficult enough to where its risky for the trainer and not worth doing. I would prefer it to be impossible but I doubt that is doable without hurting other aspects of the game. The AI needs to be well designed and should only switch targets to players who use abilities on them/damage them, reset if the target gets too far away, commonly have ccs to slow players down or keep them from running, and deal a good amount of damage to where the "trainer" is taking damage and putting themselves at risk by doing it.
I'm certainly of the mind that the mechanic is often used to grief players. In general, I strongly prefer it was discouraged. However, it would be exciting to have this mechanic form part of game modes with high stakes, such as clearing the boss room of a dungeon or even interrupting high-quality resource gathering via a scripted scenario that other players can trigger.
Imagine, if you will, a guild has come together to clear a dungeon, the boss room is on the horizon, but, this other guild wants to send in some NPCs to wear down the enemy's heavy hitters, maybe even kill their healers. The original guild trying to clear the dungeon will need to make sure "X" doors remain closed, otherwise, the invading guild can suddenly increase the difficulty by opening the doors and allowing for "Y" mob to go into the boss room and join the boss.
Lastly, if there is a known gathering node for rare pearls in the ocean, you might have two ships that are trying to gather them. The first ship will begin gathering, trying to make a quick getaway, however, the second ship may be able to pick up some Kraken eggs and toss them at the players. These eggs would only be gatherable when the node is being interacted with and the target is those who are gathering. It would prevent players.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of variables where this can increase the difficulty of a given game mode, however, it is used to troll and grief if not handled correctly.
" What do you mean a book I cannot have?" - Frufire
Why is this even a question? Traning would be a way to circunvent corruption, I'm all for pvp but this will be used most of the time as cheap griefing, if there is a system that allows you to ignore corruption while killing someone(outside of oceans and other pvp areas), it should be treated as a exploit and be removed, and anyone who uses it in the mean time, banned.
And to be clear, it's not that I don't understand how it could be a strategy for pvp, it's just that any mechanic like that goes in direct conflict with the corruption system, which is there to protect people from griefing, allow stuff like training and you'll lose players over griefing.
It should be difficult enough to where its risky for the trainer and not worth doing. I would prefer it to be impossible but I doubt that is doable without hurting other aspects of the game. The AI needs to be well designed and should only switch targets to players who use abilities on them/damage them[/b], reset if the target gets too far away, commonly have ccs to slow players down or keep them from running, and deal a good amount of damage to where the "trainer" is taking damage and putting themselves at risk by doing it.
I total agree with AshRen:
!! Worst possible "game mechanic" ever !!
@Voeltz I like your point of view., if it is not avoidable. Just one thought regarding the switching of targets. If there is an ongoing damage over time - area of effect (dot-aoe) and you pull it in. wouldn't the target switch to you as well?
I dont really see it as a problem, this can be a fun mechanic in PvP to deny AoE spamming mages. I probably would have the NPC issue a warning on the first damage and initate combat on the 2nd or 3rd ability hit so sneaky meeles dont just run and hide behind NPCs or set the NPC to aggro both the nearest player clearly at fault for involving the NPC and the damage dealing for not considering to go with a single target dps. This way the 'initiate of training' would be punished because this player ran to a NPC to hide behind and should this player run away the NPC will turn to the damaging player. Easy solve. Could even entail using the 'sorry' emote to reset the NPC to warning stage which has ah 15sec CD or something.
Heavily encourage it because it keeps the PVX aspect of having PvE inside of PvP and if you wish to be the best player in the game you must continue to perfect both PvE AND PvP. It is also in almost every open world PvP game on the market and most of them work pretty well to add complexity to the game to make it more challenging when fighting better players. Casuals will continue to call it griefing because they do not see complex PvP tactics as valid playstyles because they just want it to be an RNG system so they can win sometimes instead of having to pit their skill against others to win.
(Mind you i believe most of the dissenting opinions on this thread thus far do not understand how actual training works or how the corruption system works because this would not negate or sideline the corruption gained from killing/attacking players in PvP, it is merely a strategy to pull PvE mobs into a PvP encounter which allows for aggro shifting if you are able to drop aggro during the encounter which would then push the mobs onto the opposing player, but it could also backfire on you if done incorrectly which is where the risk/reward comes in which makes it favorable) i.e., Karma bombing (BDO) won't work in ashes with the corruption system working as intended with the flagging system in mind
(That topic could have needed a bit more explanation and it is interconnected with other mechanics.)
Counter question:
What if someone body pulls a group together to farm them, and I just "steal" the mobs with some AoE before he/she does even hit them? That's technically the same process, should it be discouraged? Of course not.
If you are not on the aggro list, you shouldn't get attacked by the NPC by just walking by (or it walking by you).
But NPC AoE skills should affect everyone in range and pull them into combat. On the same side, player skills should also always hit every NPC in range, whether aggressed by others or not. When NPCs reset, they should reset and not switch to another target in their range.
Otherwise those systems would be super easy to exploit.
One thing that comes to my mind again when talking about dying to NPCs.. You shouldn't drop any loot when being killed without any player interference, imho!
Training should not be allowed. The people saying it's a valid tactic have never spent 6 hours being repeatedly wiped by a handful of griefers training their raid mid way through a boss fight. Since most of Ashes content will be open world and highly contested, if you allow training, this WILL happen. Consistently.
Some of us are from full loot games and have been wiped by trains daily. It’s not a unique experience.
I have been mobbed out of resources/areas and right out of games with 'training' tactics. Mob aggro shouldn't target a player when chasing another player automatically if that targeted player didn't engage in them. They should run back to their places. If it's in the game, make it impossible to do this with bosses and elites. The stronger monsters/npc enemies should be smart enough not to fall for that trick. The weaker enemies though, like animals, might fall for that. Training should serve a purpose-a quest that asks you to aggro a herd of mad boars off a cliff would do.
I want to add another comment, because from some of the comments here, I suspect that some people may not have really understood the prompt, or else have not experienced much of what training can be like in an MMO.
Dev Discussion - Training (PvP)
Training is when players pull enemy NPCs onto other players in hopes that it will kill them. Some players see this as a valid and fun combat tactic to play around, and some do not. Would you like to see mechanics that support or discourage training in Ashes of Creation?
My stance is that I do not want them to support training. That doesn't mean I want super restrictive leashing or other mechanics that makes the game feel unrealistic, but it does mean I don't want their philosophy to be that training is something that is "supported".
My reason for this stance comes from my time playing on Everquest PVP servers, where I played from 2000 - 2010. In my time there, one of the ways that the top guild maintained their dominance was by training the lesser guilds whenever they attempted to beat a high tier raid boss that would grant them better loot or access to higher tiers. It would often take a matter of hours for a raid in EQ to clear through a dungeon to reach the final boss, then when they were engaged on the boss, a single member of the rival guild could train them with 30+ mobs and dump them on the raid. There was no recovering from a train like that, it would be a guaranteed wipe. Best case, if the raiding guild logged out a cleric, they could rez everyone and try again 20 - 30 minutes later once rezes and rebuffs were complete, worst case you were looking at another several hours clearing back in. In either case, nothing prevented another train from stopping your next attempt, and all the following attempts.
Training was against the ToS in EQ, but enforcement was so lax that unless a GM was physically present to see it happen (which they almost never were), there was no punishment. If training is "supported" in AoC, I am 100% confident this is the type of gameplay that will follow. This type of behavior was not a one off, it happened repeatedly for years, and for many hours in a single night. I have been on both sides of this experience, both having my entire raids time wasted by one trainer, and wasting an entire raids time by training them.
One argument that has come up here a lot concerns how aggro will transfer, suggesting that you can just avoid using AoEs to pull aggro off of the person training. That doesn't matter, because in this scenario the answer is simple, the trainer will just die, leaving the mobs where they died, on top of the enemy raid to wipe it out. Sure, they will take a death penalty, but they will also inflict death penalties on an entire raids worth of their opponents, as well as stopping them from getting their boss kill and wasting hours worth of clearing and preparation. All without gaining any corruption. That is not just an acceptable trade off for the trainer, it's a total win.
Anticipated arguments:
"You're just a carebear" - You want mobs to do your work for you because you are afraid of/can't win at pvp.
"According to the rules if they continuously train they will get punished for griefing" - They will just send a different person to train each time.
"If your guild is good you will just beat the train and the raid boss at the same time" - You want raid bosses to be so easy that a raid can still beat it even with a ton of unexpected adds, which means when there aren't any trains the content will be pathetically easy.
"This isn't Everquest" - Training wasn't even allowed on EQ and it got that bad, how much worse will it be if the developers officially support it?
I can't even believe this question was posed to the community. Training is griefing. If you don't think so, you either have not experienced real training, or you are a murder hobo who wants the power to grief other players that you can't beat in PVP, or you want to avoid the repercussions of corruption. Regardless of your stance on leashing, mob aggro, game difficulty, or any other tangential aspect, I find it completely absurd that they are considering "supporting" training as a game mechanic. Raid bosses should be contested by PVPers, not by pathetic losers who can only win by training.
I'd say Training would be seen as griefing in most cases.
Think of it this way, in PvP generally the victim doesn't lose anything but in Ashes you will, and the killer would become corrupted. All combat related deaths penalizing you generally come from PvE deaths or the penalty is at least different between a PvP and a PvE death, PvE deaths you could lose xp which could be hours worth depending on the levels and values, with PvP deaths having their penalty dumbed down as to not discourage the players that dont enjoy PvP.
So the game systems would first have to recognize that a PvP scenario is occurring for "Training" to occur without it being seen as griefing, and the AI of mobs would have to be improved beyond the standard of what other MMO's operate at. Normally its DPS/threat that pulls aggro from mobs, for training to occur without it being griefing, both conditions must be met, the system must recognize a PvP scenario, and the AI would have to behave in a way that distributes aggro evenly and/or fairly, this would put every player in the area at risk and is the most fair way in my opinion.
There's no reason to overcomplicate mob aggro, but if done right could introduce a pretty interesting mechanic.
I've seen people mention having RNG leashing. I like that idea. Some mobs may chase you two rooms over while some won't leave their room. Think that would make for some interesting play in general and be an annoyance for ppl trying to train mobs.
I personally think that a mob switching aggro onto a nearby player over the player who pulled the mob and ran doesn't make much sense. If the mob losses aggro off the original pull and doesn't receive a new form of aggro, it should reset instead of switching to a player thats attacking a different mob. Maybe have it so that after x distance from home point, proximity aggro is disabled.
From a systems perspective, running a train onto another player just seems like a way to circumvent the corruption system. Why fight someone over resources if you can just flood them with mobs? Why contest a dungeon boss when you can flood a party with mobs? Why get corruption when you can just circumvent it?
Finally, I don't think its ever fun to get trained. Theres little you can do besides hope you can ran away and have the leash reset, and give up whatever resource is being contested. There isn't meaningful interaction between players or at least a mechanic like training cheapens interactions between players. Its a bad gameplay loop. I think the only players that find this tactic fun are those who use it against other players.
At the end of the day, running a train on a player is just a means to get what you want without fighting over it, avoid interactions with players, and ruin the play session of the victims. Its a Low Risk High Reward activity and I don't think it belongs in a game like AoC.
However, I don't want this to affect the aggro mechanic as a whole. If the dev team is able to nail aggro and threat generation, but trying to prevent or allow for trains messes up the work already done, than they should just keep what the system they built allows for. But they definitely should do everything they can to discourage training as a tactic.
It depends on the gamemode. If it's arenas, the focus should be on player vs. player. How well you know your class/build, your different matchups, and how to play the gamemode should dictate whether you win or lose.
If it's open world PvP, mob interference is fine as long as they are weak enough that they are an extremely light nuisance at best (aka ignorable). Otherwise, if the mobs are strong, dragging them onto an enemy to disrupt their gameplay is just griefing and annoying. I don't think it's a particularly skillful thing to do as you just have the NPCs deal with the players for you. It's not PvP at that point.
Glorious Ashes community - it's time for another Dev Discussion! Dev Discussion topics are kind of like a "reverse Q&A" - rather than you asking us questions about Ashes of Creation, we want to ask YOU what your thoughts are.
Our design team has compiled a list of burning questions we'd love to get your feedback on regarding gameplay, your past MMO experiences, and more. Join in on the Dev Discussion and share what makes gaming special to you!
Dev Discussion - Training (PvP)
Training is when players pull enemy NPCs onto other players in hopes that it will kill them. Some players see this as a valid and fun combat tactic to play around, and some do not. Would you like to see mechanics that support or discourage training in Ashes of Creation?
Keep an eye out for our next Dev Discussion
I think there should be areas where it is possible and others where it is substantially more difficult. e.g. Roaming around in a forest and just pulling a wolfpack into another group is just low effort BS that doesn't really make much sense to me - if someone wants to do that, have them flag for PvP and mark someone with a "bait" that lures enemies from a greater distance than usual. This gives players the ability to react and also requires the one trying to stir trouble investment costs. On the other hand lets say a group invades a castle ruin full of sentient-ish beings that settled down there. I think in this situation it should be easier to kite enemies into other groups, but it would also make sense to me that the group might "secure" the are they are fighting in - be it by buying and putting um barricades from a carpenter or having something like a "ward" they can place to cover their back.
Generally, the same principles should apply as always - risk & reward.
Maybe creating items that allow for countermeasures against such people can be part of the game. Smoke bombs to disengage PvE targets in the area, the ability to throw a bait back onto the one who put it on someone in the first 10 seconds or so. I wouldn't want to try and strictly ban it, because that wouldn't really work anyways but create means for players to defend themselves against those who try to clobber them with a train.
(My thoughts are frome a competetive PvP mind) The first thing that comes into my mind when i hear training is maybe i could use that to ignore or workaround the corruption mechanic. So i would not mind to not have training available. I did like to use it in other games where you get an combat advantage out of it, but i could live without it.
In black desert online it is the norm not to kill someone and feed them to mobs to avoid their karma system which is not nearly as strong as AoC planned corruption system. Training on players will be common and almost unavoidable, just important to have system in place to reduce its effectiveness. Having tighter leashes should help a lot based on the area and type of mob.
It also will help scale some classes down so people don't get in the mind set of training a large number of mobs and just aoeing them down. Granted mobs should have some form of difficulty to make that a less viable strategy. Granted again higher levels will do that to help power level lower end people.
IzexMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I wouldn't mind one way or the other. I always liked seeing bosses being led to a city in WoW but if the guards would have to attack whatever is being led into the city. I can see it being frustrating to come back from being AFK and being killed, and honestly unacceptable if there are penalties to that death.
Comments
Certainly do not want to see short leashes on mobs in dungeons making the deepest depths easy runs to get to
New world was one example of that, some people go outside flagged for pvp to have some fun an extra gathering boost, but what you get is pve players pulling mobs while you trying to gather, until you leave the place because you can´t do shit, they go unflagged for pvp, that´s why i hate flagg system.
In Aoc case if he is doing mob train just kill root him or stagger and the mobs will do the rest of the job
A more interessting discussion would be "How to determine when, and for how long, an NPC chase a player".
Avoid the generic x distance or y time metrics, and build a more dynamic and logical reasoning into the decision making of the NPC's.
Some examples:
A guard would chase a player a short distance, before returning to his post.
A hungry wolf could be desperate, and chase you for a long time, but - give up the chase quickly if the player moved much faster than the wolf.
A wolf that recently ate could ignore the player altogether.
A single NPC could rally nearby friends to hunt down the player, using flanking when possible.
If you choose a more complex, systemic and dynamic solution, with a series of different rulesets that could be activated based on morale, health, status, type of creature, that creatures standing vs the player, it's "job", these rules should also include "abort chase" conditions, and these conditions should again contain a ruleset for when and why an NPC would switch target (aka dump agro on another player).
With this dynamic behaviour, the same creature would not react the same way every time, forcing the players to consider not only the NPC itself, but the surroundings, the situation, and the condition of the NPC.
This would most likely lead to a much more immersive gameplay experience, but at the cost of slightly more complex AI engine, and increased server load.
I apologize if I sound somewhat blunt; but to me this sounds like a fancy rephrasing of "If I am about to loose, it is ok to cheat."
Great tactic for fighting crowds and using the environment.
While I do believe you are never going to eliminate the possibility to train other people. You can definitely eliminate that not any random person can just do it with no thinking, just for the sake of annoying.
On the stream atm the mobs are quite braindead, they are slower than players, they don't CC, they basically do nothing other than auto-attack and some fancy skills.
If mobs just started to CC players when players are running away from them(slow, root, whatever) or if they get a buff if they are too many packed together (ArcheAge), which increases their speed, power and what not would potentially stop the mindless training.
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Solutions to fix brainless training:
- Mobs have fix distance to reset(leash) away from their spawn area, they should not be able to follow someone indefinitely.
- Mobs should have reaction/AI to respond to someone just running around with them. Like slowing, pulling, any CC, getting buffed as more and more mobs are packed together.
- Wish there was a way to just snipe PK people running with 10 mobs behind them into your party without gaining corruption, but somehow I doubt that is a possible solution and would be abused in other forms.
- These should also prevent people to just brainlessly run through a dungeon, to get to the deeper levels without fighting their way through. (Like when Steven just ran through the entire dungeon to get to the dragon boss Lmao)
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What mobs should not do:
- If the training person dies near a group and the group is in proximity of the mobs aggro range, please do not make the mobs reset unless they reach their leash distance. It is just immersion breaking, might as well just give the mobs no AI then.
I do not mind if one group uses the environment(training) to sabotage an another group so they can annoy the enemy guild or something similar. Just have mechanics in place to prevent 1-2 players to purposely waste entire groups of people's time with no effort.
Assuming training is superior for PvP because it bypasses the Corruption system and allows you to have a mass of minions fight “for you”, then logically, everyone would try and do it. If everyone is doing it, then PvP devolves into everyone training each other. And why play a summoner when you can “summon” the mobs around you?
Would you rather have PvP be everyone training on each other, or actual 1v1/GvG player versus player fights?
Just because thinking something is weird because mobs run by you and it doesn't live up to the standard of real life does not mean a game should be balanced around that. In real life you aren't fighting dragons, seeing magic or one shotting mobs because of level and magic gear.
Things need to be balanced off design objective.
Or i simply need to stay explaining every way you can grief simply because you want things to be super realistic. Hard encounters need to be in the design of the current fight, difficulty isn't mobs are running back since someone pulled them, so they attack other players as they head back.
If you are worried about alertness of monsters, then design something where if you are spotted without killing the mob under a certain amount of time more come and reinforce the area making it harder to get in and escape.
Desire mobs to leash then attack other players when they head back in a train is a perfect way to grief people and pick up easy gear without ever pvping them. And wanting that in the game or to be made easier is pretty silly, it will 100% be used on you when you don't flag up.
You need to consider the game and all elements of the game with pvp. The consequences of being corrupted will have player use any and all means to avoid it for their own advantage and to get plenty of free gear. Mob difficulty plus training will be an issue for a lot of players when higher levels out level the mobs and can free farm players or stop them from farming an area safely without needing to dec the guild or flag.
It's one thing to want something but you need to consider all the balance of the game and how it works...
But there will be drastic consequences for training mobs onto someone, or a party, that players name will be shouted in /Defense Chat, that players name will be immediately added to every KoS list, their Guild Leader is going to get swarmed with PM's - and they'll probably receive the well earned title of Enemy Of The State.
Imagine, if you will, a guild has come together to clear a dungeon, the boss room is on the horizon, but, this other guild wants to send in some NPCs to wear down the enemy's heavy hitters, maybe even kill their healers. The original guild trying to clear the dungeon will need to make sure "X" doors remain closed, otherwise, the invading guild can suddenly increase the difficulty by opening the doors and allowing for "Y" mob to go into the boss room and join the boss.
Lastly, if there is a known gathering node for rare pearls in the ocean, you might have two ships that are trying to gather them. The first ship will begin gathering, trying to make a quick getaway, however, the second ship may be able to pick up some Kraken eggs and toss them at the players. These eggs would only be gatherable when the node is being interacted with and the target is those who are gathering. It would prevent players.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of variables where this can increase the difficulty of a given game mode, however, it is used to troll and grief if not handled correctly.
- Frufire
And to be clear, it's not that I don't understand how it could be a strategy for pvp, it's just that any mechanic like that goes in direct conflict with the corruption system, which is there to protect people from griefing, allow stuff like training and you'll lose players over griefing.
I total agree with AshRen:
!! Worst possible "game mechanic" ever !!
@Voeltz I like your point of view., if it is not avoidable. Just one thought regarding the switching of targets. If there is an ongoing damage over time - area of effect (dot-aoe) and you pull it in. wouldn't the target switch to you as well?
(Mind you i believe most of the dissenting opinions on this thread thus far do not understand how actual training works or how the corruption system works because this would not negate or sideline the corruption gained from killing/attacking players in PvP, it is merely a strategy to pull PvE mobs into a PvP encounter which allows for aggro shifting if you are able to drop aggro during the encounter which would then push the mobs onto the opposing player, but it could also backfire on you if done incorrectly which is where the risk/reward comes in which makes it favorable) i.e., Karma bombing (BDO) won't work in ashes with the corruption system working as intended with the flagging system in mind
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Counter question:
What if someone body pulls a group together to farm them, and I just "steal" the mobs with some AoE before he/she does even hit them? That's technically the same process, should it be discouraged? Of course not.
If you are not on the aggro list, you shouldn't get attacked by the NPC by just walking by (or it walking by you).
But NPC AoE skills should affect everyone in range and pull them into combat. On the same side, player skills should also always hit every NPC in range, whether aggressed by others or not. When NPCs reset, they should reset and not switch to another target in their range.
Otherwise those systems would be super easy to exploit.
One thing that comes to my mind again when talking about dying to NPCs.. You shouldn't drop any loot when being killed without any player interference, imho!
Some of us are from full loot games and have been wiped by trains daily. It’s not a unique experience.
My stance is that I do not want them to support training. That doesn't mean I want super restrictive leashing or other mechanics that makes the game feel unrealistic, but it does mean I don't want their philosophy to be that training is something that is "supported".
My reason for this stance comes from my time playing on Everquest PVP servers, where I played from 2000 - 2010. In my time there, one of the ways that the top guild maintained their dominance was by training the lesser guilds whenever they attempted to beat a high tier raid boss that would grant them better loot or access to higher tiers. It would often take a matter of hours for a raid in EQ to clear through a dungeon to reach the final boss, then when they were engaged on the boss, a single member of the rival guild could train them with 30+ mobs and dump them on the raid. There was no recovering from a train like that, it would be a guaranteed wipe. Best case, if the raiding guild logged out a cleric, they could rez everyone and try again 20 - 30 minutes later once rezes and rebuffs were complete, worst case you were looking at another several hours clearing back in. In either case, nothing prevented another train from stopping your next attempt, and all the following attempts.
Training was against the ToS in EQ, but enforcement was so lax that unless a GM was physically present to see it happen (which they almost never were), there was no punishment. If training is "supported" in AoC, I am 100% confident this is the type of gameplay that will follow. This type of behavior was not a one off, it happened repeatedly for years, and for many hours in a single night. I have been on both sides of this experience, both having my entire raids time wasted by one trainer, and wasting an entire raids time by training them.
One argument that has come up here a lot concerns how aggro will transfer, suggesting that you can just avoid using AoEs to pull aggro off of the person training. That doesn't matter, because in this scenario the answer is simple, the trainer will just die, leaving the mobs where they died, on top of the enemy raid to wipe it out. Sure, they will take a death penalty, but they will also inflict death penalties on an entire raids worth of their opponents, as well as stopping them from getting their boss kill and wasting hours worth of clearing and preparation. All without gaining any corruption. That is not just an acceptable trade off for the trainer, it's a total win.
Anticipated arguments:
"You're just a carebear" - You want mobs to do your work for you because you are afraid of/can't win at pvp.
"According to the rules if they continuously train they will get punished for griefing" - They will just send a different person to train each time.
"If your guild is good you will just beat the train and the raid boss at the same time" - You want raid bosses to be so easy that a raid can still beat it even with a ton of unexpected adds, which means when there aren't any trains the content will be pathetically easy.
"This isn't Everquest" - Training wasn't even allowed on EQ and it got that bad, how much worse will it be if the developers officially support it?
I can't even believe this question was posed to the community. Training is griefing. If you don't think so, you either have not experienced real training, or you are a murder hobo who wants the power to grief other players that you can't beat in PVP, or you want to avoid the repercussions of corruption. Regardless of your stance on leashing, mob aggro, game difficulty, or any other tangential aspect, I find it completely absurd that they are considering "supporting" training as a game mechanic. Raid bosses should be contested by PVPers, not by pathetic losers who can only win by training.
Think of it this way, in PvP generally the victim doesn't lose anything but in Ashes you will, and the killer would become corrupted. All combat related deaths penalizing you generally come from PvE deaths or the penalty is at least different between a PvP and a PvE death, PvE deaths you could lose xp which could be hours worth depending on the levels and values, with PvP deaths having their penalty dumbed down as to not discourage the players that dont enjoy PvP.
So the game systems would first have to recognize that a PvP scenario is occurring for "Training" to occur without it being seen as griefing, and the AI of mobs would have to be improved beyond the standard of what other MMO's operate at. Normally its DPS/threat that pulls aggro from mobs, for training to occur without it being griefing, both conditions must be met, the system must recognize a PvP scenario, and the AI would have to behave in a way that distributes aggro evenly and/or fairly, this would put every player in the area at risk and is the most fair way in my opinion.
There's no reason to overcomplicate mob aggro, but if done right could introduce a pretty interesting mechanic.
Mob AI needs to be better than 15 years ago.
Leashes need an overhaul, and agro triggers need to be smart.
If a guarding mob is drawn to it's leash it should hurry back to it's guard position, not get pissed off at random bystanders.
From a systems perspective, running a train onto another player just seems like a way to circumvent the corruption system. Why fight someone over resources if you can just flood them with mobs? Why contest a dungeon boss when you can flood a party with mobs? Why get corruption when you can just circumvent it?
Finally, I don't think its ever fun to get trained. Theres little you can do besides hope you can ran away and have the leash reset, and give up whatever resource is being contested. There isn't meaningful interaction between players or at least a mechanic like training cheapens interactions between players. Its a bad gameplay loop. I think the only players that find this tactic fun are those who use it against other players.
At the end of the day, running a train on a player is just a means to get what you want without fighting over it, avoid interactions with players, and ruin the play session of the victims. Its a Low Risk High Reward activity and I don't think it belongs in a game like AoC.
However, I don't want this to affect the aggro mechanic as a whole. If the dev team is able to nail aggro and threat generation, but trying to prevent or allow for trains messes up the work already done, than they should just keep what the system they built allows for. But they definitely should do everything they can to discourage training as a tactic.
If it's open world PvP, mob interference is fine as long as they are weak enough that they are an extremely light nuisance at best (aka ignorable). Otherwise, if the mobs are strong, dragging them onto an enemy to disrupt their gameplay is just griefing and annoying. I don't think it's a particularly skillful thing to do as you just have the NPCs deal with the players for you. It's not PvP at that point.
I think there should be areas where it is possible and others where it is substantially more difficult. e.g. Roaming around in a forest and just pulling a wolfpack into another group is just low effort BS that doesn't really make much sense to me - if someone wants to do that, have them flag for PvP and mark someone with a "bait" that lures enemies from a greater distance than usual. This gives players the ability to react and also requires the one trying to stir trouble investment costs. On the other hand lets say a group invades a castle ruin full of sentient-ish beings that settled down there. I think in this situation it should be easier to kite enemies into other groups, but it would also make sense to me that the group might "secure" the are they are fighting in - be it by buying and putting um barricades from a carpenter or having something like a "ward" they can place to cover their back.
Generally, the same principles should apply as always - risk & reward.
Maybe creating items that allow for countermeasures against such people can be part of the game. Smoke bombs to disengage PvE targets in the area, the ability to throw a bait back onto the one who put it on someone in the first 10 seconds or so. I wouldn't want to try and strictly ban it, because that wouldn't really work anyways but create means for players to defend themselves against those who try to clobber them with a train.
It also will help scale some classes down so people don't get in the mind set of training a large number of mobs and just aoeing them down. Granted mobs should have some form of difficulty to make that a less viable strategy. Granted again higher levels will do that to help power level lower end people.