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
Bow from a distance. Fireball from a distance. Rogue that is invisible. You shouldn't know the danger is imminent until the attack is on it's way, if they are doing it right.
You leave out those PKers that just want to kill and grief people in this explanation.
You keep making it about 'value', but what if the 'value' is controlling another player, stalking them on their freehold? What if THAT is the 'value' to the PvP Player?
You can say they are a bad PVP player, a dumb PVP player, that they won't 'profit'... all fair. But they are getting out of it what THEY want.
It would be a gross advantage.
I could see that being a problem. Especially with a first hit from safety. But, they could just make it, as soon as someone initiates combat, Freeholds are no longer a safe point for that player. If someone wants to PVP, they will be getting a first hit out in the world anyway.
This is not a valid argument. The vast majority of players will be on freeholds to craft or sell their creations. What you are talking about is a theoretical and an absolute waste of time. Even if this was a thing, isn't this what PvP players want? Engagement?
Don't allow first hits from safety. If you are on the Freehold... you can't Attack, you can't be Attacked.
This makes more sense, lol.
Edit: if someone was to attack and then duck back into the freehold. I could see the option of the freehold no longer being safe viable.
The problem is the abuse by the people who have a safe haven vs the people who are traveling.
If people have a safe haven in the yard, that's an overkill, people be step in and out the yard when they can take the fight... people who are travelling don't get to choose this
I don't think you are understanding what I am saying. You keep saying people on their freeholds will be looking for PvP from their safe haven. That is a wrong estimation. Freeholds will largely be occupied by PvE players who could care less about fighting some random person.
And, yes, people who are traveling can chose to not go near a freehold.
The ones who would suffer from freeholder pvp attacks is a traveler who for some dumb reason came right up to the freehold. And even then only the few uber pvpers who just happened to be at their freehold would even think of attacking the traveler.
If you want to attack me on my freehold - you deserve to get sniped by me, while I step in and out of my safe zone.
Fireball/bow range is within striking distance.
A stealthed rogue is only something you can claim to be a potential issue where when we know more about stealth. We dont know enough to know if it is viable for a rogue to sneak up on a player like this.
That all said, with the game having a 30 second TTK and you having a safe zone within a few seconds walk, a single rogue shouldn't be a problem.
I did, but on purpose.
Such players will cause grief regardless of this rule.
Players will not be able to turn raw materials to finished products on one freehold. As such, those materials need to leave said freehold. All any commenta about these players would do is shift the point at which they are annoying other players from being the point in which resources need to be harvested, to the point at which resources need to be moved to another freehold (or other area with appropriate equipment).
As such, there is no point in talking about these people in the context of this mechanic.
If you want to harvest many apples, you can go out and hunt down 100 apple trees in the wild. This will take you all day, and even then isnt guaranteed.
On the other hand, you can plant 100 apple trees on your land, then you are guaranteed access to harvesting 100 apple trees every day.
If you want a top end item though (Obsidian gear is what I am thinking here, for those that played around the same time I did), you are going to go out and kill the mobs that drop what you need, and then combine that item.
Based on Archeage, my expectation in Ashes is that some top end gear will use 10k+ raw resources to make, by the time you factor everything in.
The reason I am ignoring this point is because all this point does is shift things down the production chain.
You are saying that people may be able to camp a player to prevent then from harvesting materials with this change. However, without it, they are still able to prevent that player from transporting those same materials, using that same level of effort.
If people are sieging a freehold, the inàability to harvest raw materials is not the first concern.
That said, someone laying siege to a freehold in a manner where hey stand to gain nothing, andhave no particular reason fo a grudge against the owner of said freehold probably falls within Intrepida definition of griefing.
Further, if someone is indeed camping me preventing me from harvesting - or attempting to do so - I can think of a number of things I can do to mess with them. The specifics aren't worth going in to until we know the specifics of harvesting, but feigning harvesting for a few minutes so the player attacks while you still have an empty inventory, so they gain corruption but no materials is just one thing I have in mind.
All up, the people you are talking about here just aren't really worth talking about in the context of this mechanic.
All crops, crafting stations etc on your land were subject to permissions you set.
The above is literally the sum total of what Intrepid have described to us for Ashes.
Except it would be for a professional harvester. That's their whole gameplay, not the transportation of good. If players can completely prevent you from participating in your preferred gameplay - that's bad, in the context of Intrepid trying to appease some casuals (which they said they want to do).
The freehold owner can just ask for help with the transportation when they need it, because it's a one time thing, rather than a potentially prolonged process of whatever the freehold-based professions entail.
Now, obviously there's a chance that nothing you can do on your freehold takes you a long time and the solution to my problem could be solved the same way I mentioned, but then I'd assume Ashes will lose its casual audience even faster than it already will. The pvp on your freehold would probably speed that up a bit, but at that point it wouldn't matter on the big scale.
But there were non-pvp farming zones, right? Maybe Steven's planning to have the in-node housing to serve as that, if you can do all the same stuff there as you can on your freehold.
I feel like AA's separation between housing and the farm is also important, because there you saw them as two entities with different mechanics, while Ashes will have freehold that serves as your main hub, so to me it seems weird to have a separation of mechanics for a single thing.
This is going on quite the tangent here, but an example of this would be tier three fabric. To make it, you get your fabric (from wool or cotton, didn't matter), you take 10 of them along with a pigment, and you combine them together to make a second tier fabric. Then you take 10 second tier fabric and combine them to make a third tier fabric.
So, your tier three fabric takes 100 tier one fabric to make. The thing is, that pigment you need to make tier two fabric uses 20 roses and clover, so your tier three fabric also takes 200 of each of these as well as your 100 actual fabric. Making the tier three fabric also requires 30 each of two other plants (cornflower and lily), and 20 of a specific type of coral requiring an underwater house to get - as well as one of the smaller pigments.
So, if you are making an item that requires a stack of 15 tier three fabric as just one if the items in the recipe, that means you need 1,500 fabric, 3,300 clover 3,300 rose, 450 lily, 450 cornflower, 300 of the specific coral type and a few other ingredients that I haven't mentioned here - just to get that fabric stack.
That is 9,300 common resources picked up from your freehold (or farm, in Archeage), just to get the stack of cloth needed as one component of one item - an item that you may well lose to regrading anyway.
No, they still need to transport their goods - or at least have them transported.
Now, to be clear again, literally the entire concept of PvP is based around the notion of keeping players from doing what they want. As an argument, this has as much of a place here as it has if we were discussing removing PvP from caravans - I mean, if all I want to do is move resources from one node to another, and you are trying to prevent me from doing that, is that not just as bad?
How can you say one is worse than the other? I am assuming you are pro-PvP in regards to caravans though. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong.
And if after all of that work they are prevented from getting that item, or, even worse, they drop it when they're PKed at their farm - I'd assume quite a lot of people will dislike that very much.
That's the point though, it's different situations. Quite a bit of artisanry will be done at your freehold. There's a chance that top lvl artisanry will only be done at your freehold, because you'll need specialized tools/items/etc. People who prefer that gameplay would most likely only have their freehold as the main means of participating in that gameplay.
Pretty much every other type of gameplay has several sources. Boss/mob pve is varied to all hell (well, assuming Intrepid don't fuck up). Pvp is the same. Even certain artisan professions will have different locations where you can partake in them. So in none of those could a pvper prevent you from participating in your preferred gameplay. They can obviously inconvenience you, but that's about it.
Now my assumption could obviously be incorrect and freeholds might not be the only way to do top lvl artisanry. If that's the case, then I guess it's no different from any other owpvp interaction. Though, as you pointed out yourself, there's gonna be a ton of stuff that you'll be able to do inside your house, where you'll definitely be protected. At which point I'd have to ask, why those professions are special while everyone else can be pvped and inconvenienced.
That coral was still bought and sold for silver - barely broke in to the range of a single gold coin. Anything that requires equipment can most likely be done in side. Unless/until we hear otherwise, that should be the assumption.
As such, the only discussion here is in regards to farming plants and/or animals. Nothing else is relevant.
We have literally no reason at all to assume there is a "top level" harvesting in the manner you are talking about - other than perhaps mounts. However, by all accounts, mounts are not subject to dropping when being killed in PvP, so you can be as successful as you like raising a mount, put it in your inventory and be rest assured you won't lose it.
The amount of effort that you are assuming a player would go through in order to "siege" a freehold would - if put in to any one of the above - absolutely prevent a person from participating in what ever content they want to participate in.
If you want to run around solo farming mobs, I absolutely can prevent you from doing that with the same amount of effort that you are assuming someone would put in to siegeing a freehold - only I would be better rewarded. I could prevent you and probably your whole guild from taking on bosses with that same level of effort.
If you want to be a crafter, I absolutely can stop that simply by blocking your resources being delivered.
Keep in mind, the level of effort you are talking about is literally 24/7 vigilance. Literally. And with no rewards. You can do anything with that level of commitment (except sleep or use the bathroom, I would have to assume).
Anyone willing to be vigilant 24/7 with no reward absolutely can fuck up most smaller guilds, let alone individual players. This change isn't causing or even adding to that. The harvesting stage isn't even the best stage to mess with a "professional harvester".
Again, this system was in place in Archeage. The issues you are talking about literally never happened.
Now, you could well look at the differences that do exist between Ashes and Archeage and look for issues, but the fact is that we don't know much at all about freeholds, harvesting, gathering, animal husbandry or anything like that, Intrepid have a working model to go off, the ability to improve it, and there is literally no reason at all to assume issues that did not exist in Archeage will for some reason appear in Ashes.
No reason at all.
Even by the simplest action of moving to another place, the victim would highly increase their chances of escaping the attacker. Be it through the means of better mobility, or simply by running into other people who'd kill the free purple. And as soon as the attacker dies and/or loses their target - it's gonna be way more difficult to annoy said target than if the attacker knew exactly where that target would be (that is, the freehold).
And you don't need to be online 24/7, because your victim would most likely not be online 24/7. W/o the ability to teleport, your victim would always be at their freehold, with you right outside the door. All the "effort" you'd have to invest would just be having the game open on your screen. And if you have 2 monitors (or even just a big enough one) - you can even watch yt/movies/etc while you're doing this.
Any other attempt at complete gameplay shutout would require waaay more effort from the attacker. You'd have to constantly track their movement, while also avoiding any other attackers on yourself (mobs included), and, like I said, a single death would immediately mess up your plans in a pretty big way.
As for boss interruption, just as with pretty much any other system, we've got no clue how hardcore it'll truly be. Maybe bosses won't be anywhere near the difficulty where a single person could mess everything up. Maybe they'll have pvp zones around them. Or maybe Intrepid gonna cave in and go instanced. If anything, I feel like "1 person screwed it all up" is the least probable design right now.
Lets take a few gathering classes - since this is the only thing affected.
We have fishing, mining, lumberjacking, hunting and herbalism.
The top tier product from mining is probably mining the corpse of a golem boss. For lumberjacks, it is probably a treant. Fishing is unlikely to take place on freeholds, so no need to even talk about that, animal husbandrys top tier product could well be skinning some top end raid boss to get it's hide. We've seen some plant type mobs in live streams as well, so herbalism could well just have something from one of them as it's top tier resource.
I mean, the game kind of needs to be built this way. We know that PvE is to be involved in gaining top tier materials, so either raiding is and gathering professions aren't, or the above is fairly accurate.
Freeholds are far more likely to be a consistent source of common materials that you need in very high quantities than it is a place to grow top end materials. By that logic, being in one place makes it likely that some other player will come along, see your would be sieger and kill them. I mean, people are only in one place at a time, you are as likely to run in to them while moving as you are while remaining stationary. Sure, they may just come back after being killed, but by then you've finished harvesting and stored everything away.
If the would be sieger isn't on 24/7, just log in before you go to work in the morning to get that harvesting done. Really easy, only takes a few minutes. Chances are, the game will be set up so that logging in for a few minutes in the morning is beneficial anyway.
I mean, you've made assumptions that it will be an issue with freeholds despite evidence that it won't. Why not assume that it will be an issue with bosses where we have much evidence that it will indeed be an issue?
On the latter point, there IS an idea to a group of PVP, likely in a family/clan/guild, targeting the move of goods from one freehold to another. And that's perfectly fine.
Trying to disrupt that logistics move out in the open world.
What I don't want is the guys to not even be able to farm their own farm on their own land.
Griefers MIGHT sit on a guy about to move his stuff to another Freehold, but it would be smart for one doing such a move of resources to be in a group for protection. So they'd only grief some one who was doing it solo... since they do it for grief and not profit.
What I want is to take that grief aspect out as much as possible. PvP for Profit I'm all for... kill those guys and take their stuff. But killing a guy just so he has to sit inside in his freehold, I just don't see why that should be a thing allowed.
In any game that there's hauling, there will be people camping at choke points and ambushing haulers. What could help AoC in this regard is having a caravan system that resembles EVE Online's courier system. EVE's courier system is not based on ships (wagons), it is based on packages (crates)... anyone can trade those packages and put them in their inventory and even delivery them to another place... this is fantastic because this lets people:
We have barely any information about the caravans in AoC, but by the streams it looks like Steven is pretty much lost about what to do with this system
Steven totally needs someone who was a hauler and a ganker in EVE to introduce him some guidelines to be followed
You guys keep saying the things you dont want, but then simply fail to understand that those things wont happen.
Once again, there is NO REASON for a player to do this.
As such, if a player DOES do this, it comes in under harassment, and is to be dealt with as such, with action taken on the offenders account.
In order for people to be all up in arms about a possible action players may take to lessen the experience of others, there needs to be something viable in it for that player. If there is nothing in it for them, it is simply harassment.
Intrepid have already made it clear that they will take action against harassment, and the actions being described here fit the description they have given of situations they would take action.
Is it a bait for bans? Or... by chance... you WILL have benefits if you attack someone on their freehold. This is why we worry about this change. Intrepid have either made a change that just baits people to get banned (because there's always people who'll play the game in the way they were allowed to play), or they made a pointless dumb decision that literally benefits no one.
If they die, they die
That's why I campaign against such arguments that say that anything is harassment and everything is an exploit and everything is griefing
It is intended gameplay, it works both ways and it has counters, that's all
Pretty much this. If the act itself would be harassment, then just don't allow attacks on Freeholds (or from Freeholds, where one could harass random passer-by from safety).
There simple is no NEED for this to exist. So what is the WANT for it to exist, why is it there, how does it benefit the game?
I agree with this as well... if the game allows it, it's not the fault of the individual player.
Which is why I'm against the change and would rather the Freehold simple be a Safe Haven completely, one you can not be attacked on and one you can be attacked from.
First of all, do we know for certain that all freeholds must have a homestead building? What if I just want to grow nothing but sunflowers on my half acre of land? Or only have refinery stations like smelters and lumber mills? I think this changes the equation a little. You could say that's a player choice, and yes, it is, but you still need to take it into account. From the wiki and the livestreams, nothing suggests that a house or a tavern is mandatory on a freehold.
How do doors and windows work? From A1 and the livestreams, we know that doors physically open and close. There was no invisible barrier in A1 to prevent access once the door was open. Obviously this can change, but if all we get is a permission list for opening the doors, as things currently stand strangers can just enter if you don't close the door in time. And windows? Are some of them open holes that can be shot through with arrows and fireballs, or are they all impenetrable glass windows?
My preferred system is as follows:
If Intrepid ends up going with only the house or tavern being a safe-zone, I would want doors to be instanced so you need to right-click to enter, or something like that, if you have permission to enter. But I think it's an inferiour choice compared to my suggestion above. I don't think a combatant or corrupted player should be safe in their own home, and I think it just creates unnecessary complexity to the whole system.
PvP on a freehold isnt harassment, but the actions you guys are all talking about as an argument against this change are.
If you are harvesting on your land and I kill you and take some stuff - that is legitimate PvP. If i then hang around for hours while you do nothing, waiting for another chance to attack you, that is harassment.
This is literally the same argument as someone spawn camping another player. I can kill you once and it's just PvP. If I spawn camp you though, its harassment.
In the same way a person spawn camping another player knows they are harassing them and risk a ban, someone camping a freehold would know they are harassing the player and risk a ban.
This should not be a hard concept to grasp.
What about holding a dungeon entrance? A gathering spot? A trade route?
This is kinda my problem with the harassment rules. Either design your game systems in such a way that harassment is very very difficult or set the same rules across all types of gameplay. Me preventing your guild from farming a boss would probably not count as harassment (I fucking hope it doesn't), but me preventing a top lvl artisan (who might be my opponent on the market) from doing their stuff would be. I don't quite see that as fair.
So just as AA had non-pvp zones with farms, copy that and give artisans a place where they can chill. Attackers can still mess them up during the transportation, just as you pointed out, but their main means of gameplay wouldn't be touched. And everything outside of the freehold would be dangerous as hell, as it should be, and holding a gathering spot for days on end, PKing anyone who approaches (it should be very very hard to do, but doable) shouldn't be seen as harassment.
Obviously is not harassment!
Why the dead player stayed for hours in the same spot? What a npc, what a bot!
Are the victims the only people in the server who have the right to stay in the same spot for hours?
In AoC, harassment will only come through chat and through PvE. In Pvp there will no be harassment, since there's only sanctioned PvP and ganking will pretty much only hurt the PK.
By the way, all spawn campers get killed too, they too always got killed in every possible game.