Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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
With such a PK system and penalties, there is a high chance that there will be not a lot of PvP with randoms in open world.
In situations, where the penalty for PK is not that great, the opponent understands that they either have to fight back or they will die.
And with such hard penalty system for PK (as in AoC), they will know that in 99% of cases they won't be killed in a PK.
If someone is the first to arrive to resource vein and start mining resources, what is the point for him to flagging for PvP? They will just continue to mine resources while standing there.
As you write:
"
siege that might be happening soon...
look for caravans...
chance that you'll have enemies that you can fight...
"
Wait half a day, maybe a siege will start...
Run around the node for a few hours, maybe someone will launch a caravan...
Spend a few hours farming in different locations, maybe you'll find someone from an enemy clan...
In the end, during prime time, for example at 5 hr of playing, spend 4 hours to looking for someone to PvP with, and maybe half an hour or an hour of fun, but if you get killed, then it's another half hour to get back from your respawn spot.
Of course, there will probably be PvP between warring clans at farming spots, raid bosses, and so on. But again, the motivation for joining a clan, or accepting a war declaration from another clan, is unclear at this point. If people on a PvE location don't want to PvP, it will be hard to force them.
Kill their healer in PK?
Well, they'll come back faster than you'll clear your PK status.
The point here is not that there won't be any PvP in PvE areas, of course there will be to some extent. The point is, when you're tired of grinding and want to distract yourself with PvP, will it be possible to find PvP without spending hours looking for caravans, searching for enemy clan members in locations, or waiting half a day for a siege to start?
I guess that'll come down to the amount of opportunities for PvP we will ultimately have and that's something we cannot yet assess. I suspect you will only get a real idea about the amount of PvP you can "quickly" access by waiting for the Alpha if not even Beta to see how player spread will be on a global scale. With that being said, I think the game isn't particularly pushing for people to be able to go full PvP or PvE and not instantly make either one available to anyone at all times.
Maybe you can instantly bonk someone over the head in a Military Nodes arena but other forms of PvP (just like PvE) will require preparation of sorts. These might be more or less extensive depending on where you are, I suspect more frequent PvP to take place in the areas near Islands with Nodes on them because pirates cannot go anywhere else creating a natural pull - just to give an example.
But that's my guess ultimately, the PvP zones will develop naturally and we will have to wait for A2 to say for sure.
It would be their job bringing PvP content.
People who want to focus on PvE are welcome to do so, the game will present them with the same challenge as you: To find it while trying to avoid "the other side".
This game is PvX, prepare to do both.
Just make a guild that is PvP focused. No need to hate on the PvE crowd.
It is very important hating carebears, they are the whinners who make devs kneel before them and demand bad games!
It's all their faul!
I hope this is a joke
I feel the statement is ironic.
Carebears should be held responsible for forcing devs to vanillafy every possible game since the 2000s, then later carebears cry about games not being fun anymore!
Ashes will not be the game for fixing that particular PvP itch. WvW, or RvR in DAoC and Warhammer Online, are like special game modes in a sense. I would absolutely love to have some sort of perpetual castle/node siege simulator in Ashes in the future, because I love RvR/WvW in general. For release, during primetime, maybe you can travel from siege to siege on different days and hope to get into one as defender or attacker. Or join a mercenary guild with that specialty. But don't count on being able to just log in and do structured pvp like that, like in those other games.
There is not real mercenary jobs in AoC, since you can't ramsom anything, don't have any diplomacy system... you can declare wars and sieges,that's all. You can't also be hired to fight someone else's war either. There are also no contracts of any kind, no prizes and no payouts.
Having a lot of PvP events will demand a lot of bureaucratic work from the guild and lot's of PvE, then you can have a lot of PvP events.
Like I said, save time, save resources, remove an annoying pest that keeps hitting you over and over and might even bring mobs to you (if that's possible).
Just plan better for the future. We don't know whether you can or cannot have several registrations for sieges, so, considering that sieges will always be during prime time, as long as you plan ahead accordingly you'll have yourself a daily dose of mass pvp all across the world.
Vertical movement through a continent is ~30m, so even if you had to move from top northern point of one continent to the bottom southern point of another one - that's still 45m at worst. And you can do this running either before the siege or after (to your tomorrow's siege).
And on the way there you might run across random purple players or caravans or any other interesting content. And of course there's gonna be the seas between the continents, so probably some pvp there.
And in case we can't multi-register - I'll definitely give feedback to change that.
Wardecs might only require one side to begin. But we'll have to see if that's the case on release.
That'll depend on how fast we can clear the corruption and how fast a full party can come back to the same location.
Most likely not, because Ashes is not a "get your desired content w/o any issue or anyone in the way". If Intrepid succeed in balancing their game's PvXness, you'll constantly have breaks from pve with pvp and you'll need to finish pvp in order to pve. These constant breaks slow down your progress, which allows Intrepid to stay ahead of that "soft cap" with their content. Which then keep up the cycle of pve>pvp>pve.
Though again, there'll be arenas with seasons, there'll be mayoral/castle/private caravans running around, guild wars for pvp guilds (and potentially merc help for pve guilds), node wars for ease of "finding enemies", the damned seas, node ruins too (in case any of those node sieges end in destruction), and obviously any potential owpvp anywhere in the world.
Hey, I am a GW2 on release 2012-quitting due to horrible first expansion & lack of pvp updates player... I LOVED WvWvW back then. I LOVE roaming PvP, absolutely wrecked. All my builds were made for that. All I would do is farm dungeons, build legendaries best for PvP so I could show them off when I drop attack people in WvWvW. I think I understand what you want & I wouldn't push them to make MORE. I would join in with me and the other roamers out there that build characters that can fit a pvp open world roaming style but can also handle pvm so you can go along with your day and jump people whenever you see someone you want to attack. My play style is to merch on game's AH, farm dungeons/resources, build/acquire BIS weapons and smack every single person in my way if I think I can take them. That way, your reward for killing that person is the resources they were going to take, but since you dropped them, you get it. IF I DIE, then I'll usually look out for the player for a rematch. If I end up losing again, I'll find a new place to farm and call it defeat.
This will all change if corruption doesn't allow you to bank, craft, or other nonsense that you'd want to do. If that's the case then no one will ever want to be corrupted and it'll be forced content for PvP which will honestly stink. I hate war PvP. I'm a roamer and I want no game destroying penalty for killing people. That's just plain stupid.
Protecting a PKer will be harder than you make it sound, especially if there are random players around. I think it's going to be a giant beacon to pile on, more than in L2. (I only played L2 for 6 months at US release) Because in L2 you went purple if you hit a red. In ashes you stay green. And I don't think you can count on it being the group tank that goes red, since it's killing blow based.
Killing a green healer could be really tough, greens can't be CC'd. IMO there is going to be a lot of gamesmanship with flagging, which is why I don't like the green/purple/red flagging system much, and would prefer force-flag combat areas
Going red is going to have more downside in Ashes than L2. Your corruption gain increases as you do more PKs through the life of the character, and the wiki says it will take more xp than L2 to work off corruption. That's why I don't expect people to go red to steal gatherables in most situations. You risk dropping equipped gear for a bunch of (possibly rare) rocks.
IMO there is going to be a strong PvE contingent in this game (server specific of course) because of the throwback nature of slower leveling and raids. Not to mention the AAA title draw.
I was talking about a party vs party situation, which would most likely happen around mobs, so the targeted party will already be under attacks. That party wouldn't flag back (according to your assumption), so attacking the healer with a tank would just start burning that healer's mana, would distract him from healing the party which could even lead to some additional green deaths and it would lead to the tank becoming a PKer. EZ life.
Obviously this will be gamed out to all hell, but that's the system Steven decided to go with because he likes it. But that gaming of the system is exactly why I think that majority of parties will just flag back to avoid overcomplication of their situation.
And I'll be definitely giving a lot of feedback to support the victim party in the situation where they get flagged upon while farming mobs. I've already done so in the past too.
Yes, this is one of the things I kinda disagree with in the current design. I'd prefer if the severe harshness came on the 10th+ PK, rather than right from the start. And that harshness would immediately start scaling really high and the PK count removal methods would be very pricey.
This would allow people to PK here and there before either stopping completely (because even a single PK would cripple them) or spending a ton of time and resources to reduce the PK counter. But we'll have to see how it turns out.
Oh, I'm sure Intrepid will be swarmed and drowned in feedback along the lines of "owpvp is bad, mkay". We've seen it a ton of times already in the past few years and the game is barely even known.
But again, it's Steven who wanted to have L2's owpvp system. If he wants to tune it to such a harsh degree that literally no one even dares to PK - then why in hell is the system even there. Now, if Steven changes his mind down the line and removes corruption all together, I'll just leave cause the game would no longer be for me, but I'd be very interested in seeing the general reaction of the backers and current supporters of the game, because removal of corruption (or maybe even just effective removal of it through bad balancing) would mean a pretty strong turn in one of the design's core pillars.
MMOs do not need 24/7 structured PvP. There's goal based PvP and owPvP.
PvP is 24/7 - you either want to be the best or you dont.
Yeah, this is my opinion here as well.
Structured, objective based PvP is for prime time, other PvP is 24/7.
Without them, you wouldnt have anyone you are able to kill in PvP!
As an honor PK from the old days, I actually love carebears and noobs. They're fun to teach and kill stuff with because they're always dying and running around in circles.
Structured PvP emphasizes the aspects of true sportsmanship, providing an environment where players can test their skills and compete on a level playing field. In contrast, open world PvP feels more like a random street fight, where anything goes, and the outcome is often determined by luck rather than skill.
However, I understand the appeal of both open world PvP and structured PvP. While structured PvP provides a level playing field and a competitive environment that rewards skill and strategy, open world PvP offers a more dynamic and immersive experience. I fully support those who enjoy both formats, but I believe that it's entirely subjective to say that one is more fulfilling than the other. Some gamers thrive in the highly-competitive environment of structured PvP, while others find joy in the spontaneous and unpredictable nature of open world PvP.
At the end of the day, what matters most is creating an environment where both can coexist and thrive.
Ashes is aiming to be a much more structured game than L2 was.
Players will have more, and be able to lose more, than they could in L2.
The thing with PvE players - and this is a thing that no PvP game has managed to capitalize on as yet - is that they are the bread and butter targets for PvP players. A game that is able to attract and hold a PvE crowd, even with open PvP in the game, is a game that will have actual vibrant servers. If a game loses it's PvE players, PvP players just lost half or more of their content.
As such, don't try to understand PvE players, just attack them and take their stuff.
I think pvp players can have fun without pve players.
Naked pvp is some of the best pvp lol.
And we're talking about different concepts There are forced actions, such as crafting things for pvp and a special pastime like picking carrots. In English, these are called care bears (?)
I didn't say they couldn't.
I said they can have more fun, for a longer time, in the same game with them.
Probably the biggest issue with Ashes right now is that there is a lot of PvE in general that is needed (or, more accurately, a lot of non-PvP that is needed), yet the game doesn't really appeal to anyone other than PvP centric players right now.
The game still needs a shift to either just be a PvP game, or towards some actual content that will attract more PvE oriented players.