I'd rather not have the npc guards shrink. I do love pvx fights.
Fully agreed. If it's an NPC Caravan, it shouldn't be diminished just because PCs happen to join it.
Coordinating with 'Random NPCs' is a great source of fun for me in all the MMOs I play (except BDO obv) and even though obviously this wouldn't be totally lost, it would be nice to not have to 'suddenly adapt to numbers decreasing' just because Players joined up.
You are phrasing it in a way that shows that you are conditioned to BGs.
It's an owpvp nmo, with real conflict of interests due to farming and leveling.
It doesnt need to provide you with an outlet for safe pvp.
What you call structuted, I call boring, predictable, pointless, lobbied team v team match.
Also warhammer online was open pvp and offered 24/7. Doesn't has anything todo with bgs
Between, sieges, node wars, and caravan attacks I believe pvp will be often enough without risk of being corrupted. PVP will still be very much and every day thing if one is looking for it... it just might differ day to day on how you can pvp without corruption.
Not the right question Imo, it implies pvp is more important when rather it's equal. On top of that it focuses on dynamics which do not favor an mmorpg to be completely honest by this i mean fighting for the sake of it instead of fighting for resources.
It doesn't imply PvP is more important, just acknowledges that it's harder to setup a good ecosystem that supports it.
"I can play for 2 hours and want to PvE (xp farm/gold farm/dungeons/gather/explore/jump puzzle/collect achievments/etc)" - This is an easy condition to satisfy. It may be hard to get a group together for a specific objective. It may be hard to avoid PvP if the specific objective you want to do is contested (but flagging is designed to cover this). But in general, most people can find something they can do that's fun or at least advances the character. If not, that's usually an endgame design issue.
"I can play for 2 hours and want to mostly PvP" - This is a lot harder to design. Solo is tough outside of arena/BGs. So you get a group together and now you need to find other groups that wants PvP. This is why there need to be PvP events, activities and zones. These things are a beacon to gather the PvP'rs to a specific area. And of course there can't be just one any more than PvE can have only one dungeon.
Before the "Dude, it's PvX" people chime in, I'm not talking about pure PvP. I'm talking about caravans with guards and people defending, open world bosses whose area force-flags everyone purple, keeps (or islands) that you PvX against guards and maybe people to take, then you PvX against people trying to take it from you and your guards. Even odd stuff like a race to gather 100 ore...where you can kill the other miners (getting x% of their ore) because participation flags everyone.
Sieges and node wars are not going to be frequent with 30-day cooldowns on declarations, and the resources needed to make a node siege declaration" "Sieging will require a similar amount of resources and time to what it took to develop the node being sieged.[24]"
My trust in Intrepid in relation to PvE is near zero.
This is mostly because they simply dont talk about it. If they dont have a basic understanding of what they want from PvE this far in to development, I doubt that they will ever arrive at that understanding.
None of what has been shown gives us an understanding of what they want from PvE - just as nothing of what they have shown gives us an understanding of what they want from PvP. Our understanding of what they want out of PvP comes from what they have said when talking about PvP.
Based on that, the only thing I can assume they want out of PvE is massive amounts of crickets.
That is probably on of the most pessimistic takes you can have on it. One that brings me back to the question I often ask when people seem so sceptic about Intrepid's most basic ability to do anything: Why are you following this project?
There is plenty of information around what they want this game to be and in what ways they intend to build that. In fact, the Tower of Carphin Livestream is about PvE and will shed a light on some of the things they have designed so far to put these things into practice. The Tank reveal also showed us a few things regarding PvE content - a point of interest to be precise. We know that PvE is necessary to find resources, the PvE (quests, dungeons, resource gathering, world bosses, exploration etc) will contribute to Node progression and therefore lead to changes in the world for us to explore, use, fight over, fend against and so on.
Stating there is no goal behind the PvE and no understanding is a bit overly dramatic.
Unless of course you don't trust any of the words and showcases so far, which would lead us back to the question what keeps you here.
Someone being skeptical is completely ok. I have my own concerns about what intrepid is promising. I have to agree with them wanting to have group content that requires you to do PvP and PvE at the same time seems a bit odd. We'll see as always I'll believe intrepid when I see it.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I mean... Castles should always be striving to build up their defenses for the upcoming Castle Siege.
Each week one of the three nodes attached to the Castles has a Siege - and Caravans should be runnning frequently to try to progress those Nodes to Stage 3.
And there are 5 Castle Nodes per server, so... if you want to focus on PvP...
Raid the Castle related Caravans - Siege the Castle Nodes each week and participate in the Castle Sieges...
There should be 5 Castle Sieges on your sever each month.
And... you know... you could always hang out on the Open Seas.
Just keep in mind that, for Ashes, PvX means that PvPers will have to also do some PvE.
Not the right question Imo, it implies pvp is more important when rather it's equal. On top of that it focuses on dynamics which do not favor an mmorpg to be completely honest by this i mean fighting for the sake of it instead of fighting for resources.
It doesn't imply PvP is more important, just acknowledges that it's harder to setup a good ecosystem that supports it.
That is exactly what we should be thinking about: What environment does is take for PvP to occur?
I would argue the 24/7 PvP demand is the one that is "unrealistic" and "unnatural" (I'm saying this without morale judgement) because people fight other people FOR something. That "something" has to be brought into existence first, which is a often times a non-combative, but almost always productive process. That is why it is so difficult to create an environment for it and why things like arenas were created or why the lawless open seas are attracting PvP (ingame as well as real life)
In Ashes we will have to produce what would be the rewards and base equipment in other games. This production takes time, much more time than it takes to kill someone else and take it from them. And I think that is why Ashes didn't go for a 100% droprate PvP system because that would have eliminated the incentive to produce anything in the first place. That in turn would have taken away the objective for PvP and change from getting "new" stuff to redistributing the stuff that is already there.
So what PvP seems to be about in Ashes (imo) is safe(r) access to the grounds from which we can source materials, "fame", character and story progression. Node ABC might block Node XYZ from promoting, which would grant us access to more dungeons and events in XYZ's zone of influence and the solution is PvP to resolve this natural conflict of interests.
It remains to be seen how fierce this fight over territory and story will be, but my suspicion is that this can only be addressed once we are in A2, Intrepid can't figure this one out just on a spreadsheet.
TL;DR: The PvP incentives in Ashes are more "realistic" than in other games, meaning it is rarer to see large scale events but you could have a lot of PvP by "following where the conflicts go". And with many people wanting conflict, I'm not too worried about not enough PvP going on. In that way the PvP - PvE divide of the past decade might actually help us drive this game.
"I can play for 2 hours and want to PvE (xp farm/gold farm/dungeons/gather/explore/jump puzzle/collect achievments/etc)" - This is an easy condition to satisfy. It may be hard to get a group together for a specific objective. It may be hard to avoid PvP if the specific objective you want to do is contested (but flagging is designed to cover this). But in general, most people can find something they can do that's fun or at least advances the character. If not, that's usually an endgame design issue.
Based on what I've read and heard from Steven, the corruption system should just make people consider the risks and rewards of a player going against a non-aggressive player. It is not as simple as "Don't PvP greens", it is "make sure that when killing greens it is worth the consequences.". It is a system to stop indiscriminate and ultimately for the game unproductive killing. And I suspect that is what it will be balanced for in A2 and B1-2. I think people will get away with much more kills on greens than they suspect.
I mentioned this somewhere else: I think we will ultimately see a different kind of "seaons shift" in Ashes, whereas times with a lot of PvE and a lot of PvP will alternate, whereby one begets the other.
"I can play for 2 hours and want to mostly PvP" - This is a lot harder to design. Solo is tough outside of arena/BGs. So you get a group together and now you need to find other groups that wants PvP. This is why there need to be PvP events, activities and zones. These things are a beacon to gather the PvP'rs to a specific area. And of course there can't be just one any more than PvE can have only one dungeon.
That's the function of arenas and the open seas. In a game where things worth fighting over just don't magically fall out of the sky through Points earned in the arena, the space for instant PvP will be limited. Best example is the real world. In that regard Ashes is actually quite realistic. If someone in real life wanted to have a fight with someone else, they would also need to go to a dedicated space for that.
Before the "Dude, it's PvX" people chime in, I'm not talking about pure PvP. I'm talking about caravans with guards and people defending, open world bosses whose area force-flags everyone purple, keeps (or islands) that you PvX against guards and maybe people to take, then you PvX against people trying to take it from you and your guards. Even odd stuff like a race to gather 100 ore...where you can kill the other miners (getting x% of their ore) because participation flags everyone.
I agree that under certain circumstances Ashes should 100% force players to go purple because the contest wouldn't be as meaningful without the risks of players going after other players to win.
Heck, I would probably agree that people going into an open world dungeon and flagging themselves purple should reward them with better drop chances on materials. If the game is adhering to risk-reward, then flagging yourself for PvP can certainly be rewarded by all means.
Sieges and node wars are not going to be frequent with 30-day cooldowns on declarations, and the resources needed to make a node siege declaration" "Sieging will require a similar amount of resources and time to what it took to develop the node being sieged.[24]"
And they shouldn't because that would make them much less meaningful. Imagine you could go and see your favorite band every day of the weekend. This is a good design choice in my opinion.
Someone being skeptical is completely ok. I have my own concerns about what intrepid is promising. I have to agree with them wanting to have group content that requires you to do PvP and PvE at the same time seems a bit odd. We'll see as always I'll believe intrepid when I see it.
Never said "don't be skeptic", I pointed out that the statements made relied on the solidified judgement that Intrepid is unable to produce anything of quality.
From previous experience, even though I enjoy Arena it can get boring/sweaty after a while. For that reason I hope that Intrepid considers adding Battlegrounds to the game, which are basically Arena in a larger scale but with specific goals such as capture the flag or whatever.
Regarding the rewards for instanced PvP, I believe non-combat related rewards like cosmetics would be ideal to avoid people selling services in these activities.
From previous experience, even though I enjoy Arena it can get boring/sweaty after a while. For that reason I hope that Intrepid considers adding Battlegrounds to the game, which are basically Arena in a larger scale but with specific goals such as capture the flag or whatever.
Regarding the rewards for instanced PvP, I believe non-combat related rewards like cosmetics would be ideal to avoid people selling services in these activities.
Arena is not for everybody, it's a hard ladder grind where meta builds and hardcounters are thrown at you. Some games have better arenas, like Guild Wars 2 where everybody is scaled. World of Warcraft arena is trash, it is all gear based.
Battlegrounds is fantastic, kept me in WoW for a bit more time, but it's not scaled and extremely gear based too... this is why WoW's PvP is garbage to me, winning at WoW is always behind a wall of grinding after gear and this is why I left WoW.
Grinding after gear for PvP is just bonkers and a huge turn off.
PvE means: A handful of coins and a bag of boredom.
As someone who values fair play and meaningful competition, I derive my satisfaction from taking on opponents who are on par with my skill level. The idea of preying on weaker players or engaging in unbalanced fights holds no appeal to me. That's not true competition - it's nothing more than bullying.
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.
I am a PvX player and I agree.
I love the sudden but memorable OWPvP and the adrenaline it gives. But I also love spending hours upon hours in structured PVP - be it battlegrounds in WoW or SWToR or WvW/sPvP in GW2.
I understand and accept if Ashes decide to not have lobby-based PvP at all - and I very much look forward to sieges and wars - but I will definitely miss the casual sense of structured PvP where I can swap from a lonely roamer to a supportive team player in an instant.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
edited March 2023
I don't think you will be missing that all.
Ashes, by design, will have that a-plenty.
The only structured PvP that is not time restricted, not limited to server prime-time (castle & node sieges & related fights) and not occasional (caravans,) is Node Wars and Guild Wars. From the wiki: "These can be declared at any time, but the quest objectives will only spawn during server prime-time, but players can kill each other at any time during the war (not only during server prime-time)."
So to always have PvP available a player will need to be part of a constantly waring node and/or guild.
I have not mentioned Naval PvP because that is 'between ships' according to the wiki, although players can use ranged skills. Nor am I considering corruption as that is likely small scale roamers at best.
So to get as much of an open-world PvP fix as I do on the GW2 WvW maps, I need to join a constantly waring node and/or guild. Right/Wrong/Good/Bad?
What in all likelyhood will happen is that in certain regions "permanent" wars between entities will arrive and they will have lots of pvp incursions back and forth. When you build something up, someone else will want to tear it down, and that will result in conflict, so no i'm not afraid of not beeing able to log on and don't find pvp.
I have a feeling PvP will be dead in this game outside of specific scenarios. At this rate just get rid of corruption and overworld PKing altogether. It's a dead feature. Very little reward and high risk.
I have a feeling PvP will be dead in this game outside of specific scenarios. At this rate just get rid of corruption and overworld PKing altogether. It's a dead feature. Very little reward and high risk.
I have a feeling PvP will be dead in this game outside of specific scenarios. At this rate just get rid of corruption and overworld PKing altogether. It's a dead feature. Very little reward and high risk.
Intrepid should delete features from the game because of feelings, instead of testing and adjusting the measures during the Alpha 2? Why?
Until they add optional permaflagging so that PvPers can roam the open world and more reliably find other PvPers, I don't think PvPers will have enough content.
There is technically no way to turn pvp off so I'm sure you'll like it. I just wouldn't be a bandit because the overall city communities will just team up and kill you. This will be the biggest obstacle for pvp in general. City communities give the safety in this game.
You'll get pvp alright but city communities will probably out number them even if they are entire guilds.
Comments
Fully agreed. If it's an NPC Caravan, it shouldn't be diminished just because PCs happen to join it.
Coordinating with 'Random NPCs' is a great source of fun for me in all the MMOs I play (except BDO obv) and even though obviously this wouldn't be totally lost, it would be nice to not have to 'suddenly adapt to numbers decreasing' just because Players joined up.
Also warhammer online was open pvp and offered 24/7. Doesn't has anything todo with bgs
It doesn't imply PvP is more important, just acknowledges that it's harder to setup a good ecosystem that supports it.
"I can play for 2 hours and want to PvE (xp farm/gold farm/dungeons/gather/explore/jump puzzle/collect achievments/etc)" - This is an easy condition to satisfy. It may be hard to get a group together for a specific objective. It may be hard to avoid PvP if the specific objective you want to do is contested (but flagging is designed to cover this). But in general, most people can find something they can do that's fun or at least advances the character. If not, that's usually an endgame design issue.
"I can play for 2 hours and want to mostly PvP" - This is a lot harder to design. Solo is tough outside of arena/BGs. So you get a group together and now you need to find other groups that wants PvP. This is why there need to be PvP events, activities and zones. These things are a beacon to gather the PvP'rs to a specific area. And of course there can't be just one any more than PvE can have only one dungeon.
Before the "Dude, it's PvX" people chime in, I'm not talking about pure PvP. I'm talking about caravans with guards and people defending, open world bosses whose area force-flags everyone purple, keeps (or islands) that you PvX against guards and maybe people to take, then you PvX against people trying to take it from you and your guards. Even odd stuff like a race to gather 100 ore...where you can kill the other miners (getting x% of their ore) because participation flags everyone.
Sieges and node wars are not going to be frequent with 30-day cooldowns on declarations, and the resources needed to make a node siege declaration" "Sieging will require a similar amount of resources and time to what it took to develop the node being sieged.[24]"
Someone being skeptical is completely ok. I have my own concerns about what intrepid is promising. I have to agree with them wanting to have group content that requires you to do PvP and PvE at the same time seems a bit odd. We'll see as always I'll believe intrepid when I see it.
Each week one of the three nodes attached to the Castles has a Siege - and Caravans should be runnning frequently to try to progress those Nodes to Stage 3.
And there are 5 Castle Nodes per server, so... if you want to focus on PvP...
Raid the Castle related Caravans - Siege the Castle Nodes each week and participate in the Castle Sieges...
There should be 5 Castle Sieges on your sever each month.
And... you know... you could always hang out on the Open Seas.
Just keep in mind that, for Ashes, PvX means that PvPers will have to also do some PvE.
That is exactly what we should be thinking about: What environment does is take for PvP to occur?
I would argue the 24/7 PvP demand is the one that is "unrealistic" and "unnatural" (I'm saying this without morale judgement) because people fight other people FOR something. That "something" has to be brought into existence first, which is a often times a non-combative, but almost always productive process. That is why it is so difficult to create an environment for it and why things like arenas were created or why the lawless open seas are attracting PvP (ingame as well as real life)
In Ashes we will have to produce what would be the rewards and base equipment in other games. This production takes time, much more time than it takes to kill someone else and take it from them. And I think that is why Ashes didn't go for a 100% droprate PvP system because that would have eliminated the incentive to produce anything in the first place. That in turn would have taken away the objective for PvP and change from getting "new" stuff to redistributing the stuff that is already there.
So what PvP seems to be about in Ashes (imo) is safe(r) access to the grounds from which we can source materials, "fame", character and story progression. Node ABC might block Node XYZ from promoting, which would grant us access to more dungeons and events in XYZ's zone of influence and the solution is PvP to resolve this natural conflict of interests.
It remains to be seen how fierce this fight over territory and story will be, but my suspicion is that this can only be addressed once we are in A2, Intrepid can't figure this one out just on a spreadsheet.
TL;DR: The PvP incentives in Ashes are more "realistic" than in other games, meaning it is rarer to see large scale events but you could have a lot of PvP by "following where the conflicts go". And with many people wanting conflict, I'm not too worried about not enough PvP going on. In that way the PvP - PvE divide of the past decade might actually help us drive this game.
Based on what I've read and heard from Steven, the corruption system should just make people consider the risks and rewards of a player going against a non-aggressive player. It is not as simple as "Don't PvP greens", it is "make sure that when killing greens it is worth the consequences.". It is a system to stop indiscriminate and ultimately for the game unproductive killing. And I suspect that is what it will be balanced for in A2 and B1-2. I think people will get away with much more kills on greens than they suspect.
I mentioned this somewhere else: I think we will ultimately see a different kind of "seaons shift" in Ashes, whereas times with a lot of PvE and a lot of PvP will alternate, whereby one begets the other.
That's the function of arenas and the open seas. In a game where things worth fighting over just don't magically fall out of the sky through Points earned in the arena, the space for instant PvP will be limited. Best example is the real world. In that regard Ashes is actually quite realistic. If someone in real life wanted to have a fight with someone else, they would also need to go to a dedicated space for that.
I agree that under certain circumstances Ashes should 100% force players to go purple because the contest wouldn't be as meaningful without the risks of players going after other players to win.
Heck, I would probably agree that people going into an open world dungeon and flagging themselves purple should reward them with better drop chances on materials. If the game is adhering to risk-reward, then flagging yourself for PvP can certainly be rewarded by all means.
And they shouldn't because that would make them much less meaningful. Imagine you could go and see your favorite band every day of the weekend. This is a good design choice in my opinion.
Never said "don't be skeptic", I pointed out that the statements made relied on the solidified judgement that Intrepid is unable to produce anything of quality.
How so?
Regarding the rewards for instanced PvP, I believe non-combat related rewards like cosmetics would be ideal to avoid people selling services in these activities.
Arena is not for everybody, it's a hard ladder grind where meta builds and hardcounters are thrown at you. Some games have better arenas, like Guild Wars 2 where everybody is scaled. World of Warcraft arena is trash, it is all gear based.
Battlegrounds is fantastic, kept me in WoW for a bit more time, but it's not scaled and extremely gear based too... this is why WoW's PvP is garbage to me, winning at WoW is always behind a wall of grinding after gear and this is why I left WoW.
Grinding after gear for PvP is just bonkers and a huge turn off.
I am a PvX player and I agree.
I love the sudden but memorable OWPvP and the adrenaline it gives. But I also love spending hours upon hours in structured PVP - be it battlegrounds in WoW or SWToR or WvW/sPvP in GW2.
I understand and accept if Ashes decide to not have lobby-based PvP at all - and I very much look forward to sieges and wars - but I will definitely miss the casual sense of structured PvP where I can swap from a lonely roamer to a supportive team player in an instant.
Ashes, by design, will have that a-plenty.
What in all likelyhood will happen is that in certain regions "permanent" wars between entities will arrive and they will have lots of pvp incursions back and forth. When you build something up, someone else will want to tear it down, and that will result in conflict, so no i'm not afraid of not beeing able to log on and don't find pvp.
That's the spirit!
In EVE, when we have something really expensive to be hauled, we do it minutes or seconds before downtime
If we get caught, the server will shutdown before dying
Not for organized groups of skilled mmo players.
Intrepid should delete features from the game because of feelings, instead of testing and adjusting the measures during the Alpha 2? Why?
Near me, Steven is just another PvPer ... almost a carebear
I can fix AoC pvp even keeping the corruption and the flagging systems intact!!
You'll get pvp alright but city communities will probably out number them even if they are entire guilds.
U.S. East