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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
The general consensus from our community is a dislike of the "training" concept being available. Pretty much in any way. Leashing should be present and there should be systems discouraging it.
To balance that, there were a couple of folks that basically said something along the lines of "Training to any distance for whatever reason should be fully allowed."
Myself and many others were in the middle ground and OK with it, if there were a few limitations.
A few of the more interesting questions/concerns that came out of the discussion:
The question then becomes - how do you handle leash. and what happens when it is unleashed.
Training is a by product of this answer.
While I am okay with or without trains and can agree training into other players as a tactic is cheap/lame and no good stories comes of it - I am also against seeing a mob finally chase you out of it's domain, assuming its a decent long leash.
Example - You pull the final dungeon boss but was overwhelmed. The only escape is to drop aggro and that requires running outside of the dungeon. He wont chase after you left the dungeon.
Or, in the Tank Showcase Video, you entered a Keep, all those mobs should chase you out of the Keep at minimum.
So with that said - I think it's incredibly stupid and lame, to see the mob become invulnerable and runs directly back to its spawn point. It should Linger for 15-30seconds before slowly walking back to its point, attacking any other intruders along the way if any.
If we also allow unvulverable mobs running baack to their spawn point on a long leash, you also create a potential tactic of an 8 man group rushing in, 1 person pulls everythign and runs out, while the 7 other just kills the boss.
Short Leash SUCKS ASS and it's also stupid. Immersive Breaking.
Once again - Trains is a by product of Leashing. How do you not train onto others while having a decent long leash, a immersive leash that makes sense.
Note - leash length should be variable / dependent to the area. Some can be short, others super long, some medium, etc... depends on the context of the area.
Realistically, in this scenario, any intelligent enemy would be able to figure out they’re being baited by player 1 committing the training technique. Even if they get hit by player 2’s AOEs, they’re only under threat at the most basic level because player 1 started attacking them and won’t stop until they become trained on player 2.
I don’t know if this is possible, but it seems like it might be: Perhaps have a way for the NPC script to detect whether player 2’s AOE also dealt damage to any other player character. If the NPC checks true for being in combat with a player other than player 2, and player 2’s AoE dealt damage to another player character, then have it generate no threat. That’s assuming threat generation is calculated on the NPC script. Not sure if this would require too much communication between scripts to be functionally viable, but there’s one idea from someone who’s only dabbled a bit in gameplay scripting.
Essentially, make it make sense. Being able to successfully train a NPC makes no sense, because if the NPC senses it’s in danger from player 1 directly and from player 2 indirectly, then the NPC would logically either stay fixated on player 1, then run back to its “home” unless player 2 keeps dealing damage to it, or run away from the situation altogether if it senses it’s in danger of dying to player 2’s AOE attacks. If it has friends around, maybe it’ll run to them and bring them back over to help them attack player 1 and kill them before any of them die to player 2’s AOEs.
Order of logical operations:
1. Kill the person who’s intentionally harming me
2. Run away and try to save myself
3. Call for backup if I have any, because player 1 is still attacking me, and I’ll die if I don’t
No one wants stupid enemies. I would suggest focusing your programming efforts around that perspective.
The problem is that if players are tempted to use trains, it means direct PvP is balanced out through the corruption mechanic and actually in those areas there is no PvP.
I view wanting to have training for bot hunting purposes to be a vote of lack of confidence in the overall ability of the dev team to provide a more robust solution to bots. It's a bit like saying "we don't think you can build the game properly but please try anyway and if you fail give us a tool to work around it" so I personally will not be doing that because it seems naively rude.
So with that said - I think it's incredibly stupid and lame, to see the mob become invulnerable and runs directly back to its spawn point.
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Highly agreed here. I'm not sure what the answer is, but I REALLY HOPE NPCs won't fully regenerate immediately and become invulnerable if you leave the leash range. I definitely understand why they need to return to a "home" location, or people would just group endless amounts of NPCs in various locations for various reasons.
But there has to be a better way.
Contesting mobs is gonna be a big focus in AoC. Raids arent instance so groups will want to contest. A group check can fuck that up with someone not being attentive.
Training can be used to avoid Corruption, and with some practice a griefer could master this tactic and grief successfully & often. Therefore training should not be possible. The mechanic should be similar to player flagging (ie green to purple) and tanking aggro, such that a mob will only attack a second player if it is hit or that player heals an existing attacker.
This approach means that no matter how many griefers and mobs are fighting around you, you will be safe provided you do not attack or heal any of them.
In conclusion, @Friss said it perfectly earlier on page 1.
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Some of my absolute favorite memories are TRAIN TO ZONE from OG EQ or trying to PvP in WoW and walking into mobs like an idiot, only to cause everyone's death including my own >.< PvP isn't always grief and the Corruption system is a really good system for preventing griefing. Yes some people will take advantage of the system, and in a game that is advocating for piracy and theft of player goods this SHOULD be expected... Banditry, piracy, and some griefing is going to be a part of the game and will add a dimension of danger and risk to the world - but the mechanic itself isn't setup to be explicitly abused, and to add guard rails around everything in order to prevent any and all forms of abuse will show as less player agency imo. It's like adding that invisible barrier on the edge of cliff to prevent the player from "falling off"... totally takes the agency away and makes the pretty landscape pretty lame.
Yes, while it has the potential to be aggravating; it provides another conduit for human expression to transfer over into the digital world.
There are already plenty, if not too many restrictions / rulesets in games; especially in today’s games versus games of the past. In turn, this dulls the immersion / fantasy feeling with frequent reminders you can’t do that or that’s not allowed; contradictory of a true sandbox style MMORPG.
Training is a vector that provides opportunity to create unique cultures within each server expressed by players / guilds. It also acts as another facet of class design / allurement; certain classes excel at training and pose another consideration when selecting a class - more facets / choices are *usually better.
There are also so many young / new gamers that have yet to experience a true server community feeling that old school MMORPGs provided, not by choice, but rather because most games are already flawed by design - greatly hindered by focusing on linear solo content. Id love to see Ashes of Creation change that and provide a perfect balance of what was great then and is great now.
But MMORPG is all of that. It is an experience of highs and lows. For many, the thought of having to spend 3 hrs of your game time trying to get your corpse back from a corpse run and lose 80% of your experience, including de-leveling sounds atrocious.
While it fucking sucked - the memories stayed forever and looking back, while angry and pissed I lost 3 hrs of quality game time to get XP, Loot - I actually did get quality experience and memory. I cant say that for many other games. It is why I hung my hat on "mmorpg" hoping to continue creating those memories.
As in Real life, relationships. Your gonna have highs and lows and what really matters are the memories you created. You dont think back of those one night stands, or acquitance and co-workers. You will remember your HS sweetheart, your best friends, that one asshole boss, family members. You feel something when they pass away and you got memories to share, whereas the others - that formed no bond and you jut knew who they were, all you do is give a sad emoji and start laughing ur ass off at the next meme you run across into.
MMORPG is an experience. It is the only genre imho that should be fully immersive with all the goods and bad. Trial and Tribulation. Overcoming obstacle, enduring lows and pushing through. MMORPG should be heavily focus on the journey, not the end. Training others - has pros and cons - there are ways to go about it to allow so, without being abused and exploited.
that's how you make mobs actually being something you need to worry about and not easily do training
suggestions to stop training with stupid AI that only aggros the person that hit the mob and short leashes are in the same level as suggestions to remove trading to stop RMT
this is breaking your game to ""fix"" something else, that in the case of training, doesn't even really need fixing
who ever stop playing an MMO because someone trained NPCs on him? probably close to nobody
who stop playing MMOs due to stupid AI and zero challenge PVE content? probably a lot of people
That is not the problem IMO, but rather the use of training to avoid Corruption so that a griefer can grief.
If there is a way to allow training and long leashes, without that being exploitable by Corruption avoiding griefers, then I'd like to know how that can be implemented.
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I don't want to my gameplay to be restricted by what I can and can't do, I'd rather solve the issue myself even if it means I am getting griefed.
there is gonna be certain levels of griefing allowed. It's kinda baked in with the PvX and it's gonna be a thing in raid content. Contesting mobs is gonna be all about griefing others to succeed. Raid Boss - you got the first hit in, you got the bonus 10% lead on DPS race, my only chance is to outdps and/or kill your DPS and getting those adds trained into you is obviously gonna be allowed.
The question is - it shouldnt be super easy to do. It shouldnt be, every class has a way to feign death and drop aggro to dump a mob into another player. it shouldnt be super easy to accidental AOE and get aggro. We just gotta find that inbetween, to allow train but not be Super easy NOR hard to accomplish.
Should be almost like a moba game, either side has a 50/50 chance to accomplish this gank or get outplayed.
However mobs that chase u short distances and stop is kinda immersion breaking and stupid tbh.
mobs in dungeons should chase you to the entance or 2 safe zones within the dungeon depending on how large it is by safe zones i mean if the dungeon is 5 floors deep they may stop chasing u ath the end of the 4th or 3rd floor so there safe stages throughout the dungeon (kinda like check points) for groups to reset at if needed instead of being kicked to the entrance.
Open world mobs im not agaist having them chase your to outside of the POI or even till you fiund help or guards (Can have guard patrol the roads between the nodes with uopgrade option to allow for more patrols and so on aswell for defence for not only ganking but also PvE, guards should be killable though of course can make them strongert based on upgrades within nodes aswell
EQ, in general, has zonelines with loading screens where, on this no rules server, throngs of mobs would be pulled in an attempt to wipe an opposing raid force/small group, via the throng of mobs, or force them to "zone over" with low HP where they then get picked off by the raid force waiting on the other side.... once dead from that method, the other raid would now try to reach the open world raid target before the raid they just trained can train them back.... this would go on and on and on for hours. Very boring.
Definitely didnt enjoy this aspect of the game. Zero pvp skill required on a server meant for player vs player combat...not player vs player train....
Pvp would always devolve to the lowest, most dishonorable form of combat and would become the only way to proceed. It essentially prevents intended pvp gameplay and players eventually quit out of frustration.
Unsure of the best approach that can be taken to try to keep things as they were meant to be....
I loved that aspect and the main selling point for me in AoC - having to contest raid bosses via PvP by almost any means. That is fair strat, hard to pull.
Even in Vanilla WoW, open world bosses were contentious af and training elite mobs as well with FD.
The DPS race only is meh, if we decide to only stack wizards, and let your guild tanks focus on tanking. Also how AoC is doing tagging - the first tag gets a bonus leads on the DPS race. So we gotta fight you in other ways to ensure a raid kill.
Hour longs fights are awesome, it's a battle of attrition - can you stay logged in for 1-2-3-4-5 hours and secure the kill or do you got school/work/kid/wife aggro? GG WP.
As others said this is usually just griefing and a way to pvp kill w/o using that system. Red players killing green players in this way is a commonly used concept, SAO used it I think, but isnt good and if they can easily do this to grief civilians w/o gaining corruption it weakens the entire PvP system.
The standard of enemies attacking based on dmg done to them and healing people who damaged them should work but think about aoe effects like if enemies have auras that damage near them. In WoW classic griefing on the emerald dragons was a HUGE problem. The few times my guild could attempt Emeriss we were griefed very hard as slaughtered by other players we cant even attack and killed in ways we cant really control. Dragging enemies with a ring of fire aura, explode on death, or things like aoe fears is a risk that can be used to grief but a carless approach can easily let teams cheese them some by not having everybody enter the threat table until after the enemy uses its AoE fear, for example.
As for mob leashes this will be tough. Some areas in WoW classic were awful cuz you will aggro 1-4 more enemies before you can leash the first since they were PACKED which made it awful to play there. Other areas were so spread out that accidental leashes could happen. Ideally code leash range to allow it to be adjusted some for mob spawns based on density. Also low hp enemies ideally wont be as likely to leash, but dying enemies fleeing makes sense so i dono.
TLDR try not to let corrupt players use this to easily kill greens w/o penalty. coding in a corruption gain (less than normal is prob fine) for kills like this prob wont be easy but would be a way to allow this but discourage it. Tho if this is attempted it may even allow green players to try an punish reds but other mechanics prob make suiciding a very bad strat.
I consider using NPCs in this manner as the dishonorable sissy weaklings approach. Id rather actual PVP occur. It was too easy to pull trains off with certain classes, and if that wasnt the case it probably wouldnt have happened as often as it did.
DPS race is meh, yeah. Its PvP though, so youll be nuking the players on the other team...
Long fights isnt a problem. Nothing but npc trains for hours does seem like youre not playing the game. Not much of an accomplishment.
It's not healthy whatsoever. I see no positive things from encouraging griefing behavior, but a lot of negative ones instead.
Also, like other people said, training mobs on other players with the objective to kill 'em, will avoid the corruption system. It'll be a shame to have a big flaw to the game that would make the corruption system useless.
Imagine a high lvl player with good gear -player A, traveling and encountering another player that just gathered a rare/legendary material -player B, under their eyes.
Player A gave no importance to the gathering and crafting systems, they just grinded and also, focused on pvp content, like caravans.
On the other hand, player B haven't grinded much, but instead, they focused on gathering most of their time.
Now, there are 2 situations, one in which training is not encouraged and the other situation, when training is encouraged. What will happen in both situations?
1. When training is not encouraged
Player A will have to pk player B, if they want to loot the rare/legendary material for themselves.
For that, they will gain corruption, as the gatherer most likely won't be willing to pvp with the high lvl and well equipped player.
In this case, the corruption system works as intended. The corrupted player will risk harsh penalties in case they will be killed while being corrupted and bounty hunters will hunt him.
That's the risk vs reward relationship, while the corruption system does it's job, as intended.
2. When training is encouraged
Player A won't have to pk player B any longer. There's a second option available for 'em, a better option: the option to train mobs on the chosen player, with the objective to kill 'em. They will gather some mobs, use a skill like "feign death" near their target (if the game will encourage this behavior, most likely there will be such skills available to 'em) and the mobs will kill player B.
Doing that, player A didn't dirty their hands pk'ing player B. Instead, he used the mobs to do the kill, while they collected the reward from the victim's ashes.
Player A bypassed the corruption system and also, gained the reward without any risk whatsoever.
Player B, who had faith in the solid corruption system that Intrepid provided, suddenly realised that the corruption system is not working as intended and they will lose valuable materials, while the opponent won't risk getting corrupted and losing their gear. All the time player B spent on focusing on gathering will become useless, as player A, who had no interest whatsoever on it, would use an underhanded and shameless method to take their fruit of labor, just like that. Player B did the work to get an amazing item, while player A forced their way without any consequences. There's the chance that player B will be dissappointed with this unfairness being a thing, so they will end up quitting the game.
Everyone who will have a bit of knowledge and will play a bit, will use this method to kill green players, as many times as it is possible to do so, without gaining any corruption whatsoever.
The corruption system will become irrelevant and will only punish the players who haven't played much and won't know about this big game flaw.
In conclusion, encouraging training on people, will create a serious flaw to the game, as both the corruption system will become irrelevant most of the time and also, the risk vs reward relationship that Intrepid promoted, will go out of the window as well, as only 1 of the 2 sides involved will lose their items, while the other side won't have any corruption on 'em and won't risk losing their gear for the decision they made.
Players who will favor gathering will become victims, as they will lose their precious items, while the aggressor will lose nothing at all.
And what about the bounty hunters? If everyone starts to train mobs on people and there will hardly be corrupted players around, this will become a useless system as well.
That's why, in my opinion, encouraging training is a bad idea, as it offers only negative things.
Like @Trenker and other players, I support what @Friss said on page 1.