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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.
Two questions from an experienced player and guild leader
Jam21
Member
I am coming mostly from old-school Asian MMOs (Lineage, Metin, BDO, Archeage etc), I had led my own guild for many years across many games, so I want (someone from dev team, if possible), to clarify 2 things to me:
1) The nodes system - specifically, military nodes. How the "ffa" participants for mayor competition will be selected? By fame, contribution or something like this, or....? Because if there will be 500 pretenders you can't simply fill all of them into an arena.
But more importantly - when it commences, you do realise that this will be by no means "ffa", but a team vs team and guild vs guild? And you will have no means to prevent it (even if you threat to ban all the "teamers" manually, people can just offtag and simulate real combat, you will never be able to tell which part of it was staged and which was not, and will only ban a lot of random innocent people in the process).
So how do you plan to handle that?
2) And speaking of bans - since this is western game, how do you plan handle the following things:
a) Harrasment by game means only (doesn't mean chat harrasment or anything like that, but actual harrasment by PvP - repeadetly killing one person, spawnkilling, and other kinds of what carebears call "griefing". ?
b) Scamming of people by in-game means. E.g. swapping items during the exchange, or taking money for services like "afk exping" , and then just running off with the money, or my favorite - taking a random healer with you to dungeon then killing him and kicking from party on 5% hp of last boss to not share loot ?
Will these things be allowed or be bannable?
In games of old, all of these things were allowed since they are part of the game and players do not violate anything by doing them. This created a lot of drama, but also added a lot of spice and enjoyment to the game. It was especially fun when the victims of these things managed to make a payback on its opressors or scammers. And also this encouraged people to be more prudent and careful in their deals.
But in modern western games, in recent times, doing things like that usually leads to a ban by admins, despite technically not being any kind of abuse, just playing the game as intended.
Which of the ways will Ashes of Creation go?
Thanks in advance.
1) The nodes system - specifically, military nodes. How the "ffa" participants for mayor competition will be selected? By fame, contribution or something like this, or....? Because if there will be 500 pretenders you can't simply fill all of them into an arena.
But more importantly - when it commences, you do realise that this will be by no means "ffa", but a team vs team and guild vs guild? And you will have no means to prevent it (even if you threat to ban all the "teamers" manually, people can just offtag and simulate real combat, you will never be able to tell which part of it was staged and which was not, and will only ban a lot of random innocent people in the process).
So how do you plan to handle that?
2) And speaking of bans - since this is western game, how do you plan handle the following things:
a) Harrasment by game means only (doesn't mean chat harrasment or anything like that, but actual harrasment by PvP - repeadetly killing one person, spawnkilling, and other kinds of what carebears call "griefing". ?
b) Scamming of people by in-game means. E.g. swapping items during the exchange, or taking money for services like "afk exping" , and then just running off with the money, or my favorite - taking a random healer with you to dungeon then killing him and kicking from party on 5% hp of last boss to not share loot ?
Will these things be allowed or be bannable?
In games of old, all of these things were allowed since they are part of the game and players do not violate anything by doing them. This created a lot of drama, but also added a lot of spice and enjoyment to the game. It was especially fun when the victims of these things managed to make a payback on its opressors or scammers. And also this encouraged people to be more prudent and careful in their deals.
But in modern western games, in recent times, doing things like that usually leads to a ban by admins, despite technically not being any kind of abuse, just playing the game as intended.
Which of the ways will Ashes of Creation go?
Thanks in advance.
3
Comments
I am in the anti-ban camp on these things. Corruption should take care of a) and the server community will take care of b). I am not sure, but I would bet a fair bit that Steven and Intrepid are also anti ban for these things.
oh great guild master. If you followed the development of the game and visited the wiki (at least in preparation for the release of the game), you would not ask these questions.
1) that citizen of the node who has more pvp points can easily cope with this.
2.)
a) for this, serious penalties are introduced for the PK and the bounty hunter system.
b) about production and percentage of investments in killing bosses can also be read on the wiki.
ps: Afk-exping will not be relevant... because "it's not the best and not the fastest way to exp.
Ye I see the community here is quite charming, like as charming as an aging Nurgling. The game isn't out yet and none of the systems are set in stone, yet people speak like it has been long ago released.
Well if you're so well informed as you claim, care to elaborate about "pvp point" and how they would help cope with "that"? Unless the server is dead it is likely most valid claimants will have about the same amount of PvP points and likely most will be in one or other competing alliance.
Exactly. Casual and solo people unfortunately don't understand that "devil is in the details". The system may sound perfect on paper but its the little things that matter, and turn, what could have been , in theory, exciting contests into boring chores with pre-determined victor.
"2a" sadly cannot be addressed by corruption system alone. Because it in no way stops organized ganking. It may stop some solos from being too edgy, but that's about it. What I want to hear is their position on this issue - if the people start mass crying about killing of lowlvls for fun, will they take some action or will they consider it a "game moment"? Because, as you probably understand - once you ban somebody for something - you can never stop. Nowadays some people consider extreme harrassment to be killed repedetly on exping spot 3-4 times in a row. Everyone has their own definition of what "extereme" is. But the only important thing is -what do admins consider as such? WoW is a good example here - in vanilla before Cataclysm, spawncamping for DAYS was normal and nobody was banned. A few years later, killing someone on farm spot 2 times in a row = ban almost certainly. It escalates fast and never in reverse.
I hope we will see working guild system and node sieges (at least in some experemental form) in the next Alpha stage. Everybody make fun of game animation and character abilities shown in last videos, but I could not care less - if AoC can bring good guild and node system, better than Albion - people will forgive any sort of trash animation and will still play.
A guild going through each one of their members just to PK some randoes, while dividing the corruption amongst themselves, will succeed for a time, but will have to pay for that with their gametime later. All while not gaining anything in the process.
For more info on the corruption system (cause there are a few small changes to the L2's system) https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Player_corruption
For their stance on griefing, 13:55 and onward here
Always start conversations with your title: "I am coming mostly from old-school Asian MMOs (Lineage, Metin, BDO, Archeage etc), I had led my own guild for many years across many games, so I Rightful heir to the Iron Throne , Rightful Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Protector of the Seven Kingdoms, the Mother of Dragons, the Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, the Unburnt, the Breaker of Chains... so i WANT...." and any community will be charming for you...
This is the correct answer, @Jam21.
Of course, corruption will go through extensive testing in Alpha 2 and Beta.
But, the way Steven framed it is that it will start to be a huge detriment if repeated PK/griefing attempts are successfully completed.
It is not. It only shows that you never played games with similar system. Just will give you one example - if we want to control a location, and there are many randoms farming and not wanting to flag on us, we won;'t kill them with our characters, ofc, We will bring a few special alts. Lower hp of randoms to low, then finish them off with expendable "PK" alts. This is just one example.
Also my question was not about preventing it - it is more about the possible sanctions to abuse this system, and overall stance of admins on "banning people for something that formally not illegal, but just not nice and ofc people will often report these things".
If you can link some videos or articles where Steven say about this I would very much like to see them.
So you don't know the answer at all, yet are hurt hard by someone just asking a question, and you need to write big texts just to explain how much you are hurt. Oh. Oh dear.
I am explaining where I'm coming from, to get the answer I am looking for (from a guild standpoint, not from a solo player standpoint). Still waiting for it by the way.
But even if you're willing to do all of that and keep doing it for as long as you want - you'll be spending more time outside of that location than in that location, so, on average, your PKing would not be enough to warrant a ban. And I doubt that Intrepid would see this as griefing, if your main goal is to hold the location rather than just PKing people for fun.
And I already linked a video of Steven discussing these situations.
Thanks, I have missed that among all the roxy's flame. Watched it.
Well he (Steven) sure is wordy. What I got from watching him explaining his stance, is that he probably wants old-school PvP, but is very hardly pressured by his colleagues and probably some in the community to limit PvP in game. Well that's worrying but guess we will gonna see where it ends.
He said things about "healty risks and not healthy risks" and mumbled on and on - it shows that clearly he has no final position on that yet. Guess well have to see.
Sometimes it is to control a spot, sometimes just for fun. The core issue is the approach of admins to that. So far - as explained above - I see no firm stance on that.
And speaking of what you said about alts - it won't be a problem. If the corruption penalties are really severe we will still think of something. The problem is "what happends after the people we killed start to cry to throw reports to support". But guess well see in game when it releases (and if it releases).
The point is, "petition wars" is something the Western MMOs are known for, now THAT is much more unhealthy than any of the "unhealthy" staff that can happen in game. Because these wars doesn't happen in game, but only in support tickets and on forums - they are boring an only leech people's energy instead of being fun. They only happen in games where admins seriously consider taking ban actions for playing the game in a certain way (without abusing bugs or cheating).
I do sincerely hope AoC won't be one of those games.
You could still team by forfeiting a match. But, you would expect the best players to still make it to the top even if a Zerg guild threw a bunch of bad players into the tournament. So zerging wouldn't work.
There could still be a similar complaint Bobby Fischer had against Soviet grand masters with win trading. The allegation was that Soviet grand masters would do quick draws against each other but go for long drawn out matches with Fischer in order to mentally drain him, hoping to ensure a Soviet victory.
To prevent this, matches first of all shouldn't be long and drawn out, so you limit series until the elite 8 to be best of threes or even lower early on in the tournament. You have people in the same guild alliance be placed as far apart in the tournament bracket as possible.
You still won't get complete fairness with everything I've listed. But I guess I really don't mind. If a guild has 6 great players, and another guild only has 1, it's going to be hard for the guild with only 1 great player to win military mayorship anyway. Recruitment and development of strong PvPers is a skill guilds should be striving for anyway.
And there's also a strong incentive for guilds not to force win trading if they have 6 great PvPers in the same tournament. The elite players who have to lose will be pissed off they have to throw the game, and will go to another guild that actually values their skill and ability to compete for a championship.
That actually is the solid idea.
And instead of "pre-stages" and stuff like (which obviously would be grotesque if for example 1000 people aspiring to be a mayor of a certain node), they can just add that Like 64 top scorers (by pvp points, arena ranking, honor or whatever its called here) can compete, and simply elimination until the one is champion.
Usually "top 64 by pvp points" among the people in the area (node), with taking to account how many nodes total are there in the world, will all be real decent players and it is open to various kind of drama (e.g. person who got carried by his mates to final but is supposed to lose the final battle because the territory was promised to other. Yet refuses to forfeit and claiming the territory all for himself. Big drama!
^I actually kind of did stuff like this back in Lineage 2 with Olympiad. Was supposed to give decisive match to designated alliance hero, but refused, became hero myself and founded my own clan
But to my knowledge, they already settled military nodes to be ffa (at least in the upcoming alpha 2), no?
Then, it's up to a bigger group to come along and beat you out of the location.
Killing other players is absolutely within the game rules. Repeatedly killing someone that doesn't fight back will give you Corruption, but it's still absolutely within the game rules. It's your decision to kill them, just as it's their decision to not fight back.
If your group becomes too much of a problem, then it's up to the players around you to group up and take you down.
Steven said, that "for fun" part will be bannable, because you'd be repeatedly killing people for no reason.
And the point of this system is to limit that "something". And if the limit is good enough, the amount of complaints will be small enough for live GMs to go through and evaluate the legitimacy of those claims. If the logs show that a PKer killed the complaining player in several spots several times within a short period of time - that's probably gonna be a warning or a small ban. If that PKer killed that player in one location several times and the PKer is still in that location - I'd imagine it won't lead to a ban, because that's defense of a location and the victim knew what they were doing by going to that location again and again.
That's the risk/reward thing Steven was "mumbling about on and on". The PKer knew the risks of killing another player (the huge penalties for doing so) and the victim then knew the risks of returning to a player that's willing to kill them (repeated green death penalties). The only thing that'll be changed through testing is the minute details of corruption gain values and death penalty values.