Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
Oh boy, I can imagine I could stay doing this against my neighbours the entire day, fuck quests
The issue isnt people sitting still - the issue is people being able to terrorize the surrounding area and then run to said safe zone.
And yes, players still have safety in their house. I would personally be all for the inability for players to lock their own door if they are either red or purple.
However, even if they can, that still makes the above terrorizing act harder - and making such acts harder is a good thing.
When you consider that the negative effects are minimal (and can be literally zero if the developers allow harvesting directly to and crafting directly from freehold storage - as many other games have done), it really is a no-brainer.
You can't really terrorize with the overpowered corruption system going on. Also, cities are also safe zones... do you think people won't camp right at the node exit?
Has that changed? Why do you think that cities are safe zones?
Sure you can.
Keep in mind, we do not know how punishing the corruption system will be. Intrepid have a number of levers they can pull to make corruption more or less punishing (corruption gained per equal level kill, rate at which penalties compound with additional corruption, amount of corruption worked off per point of experience gain etc.).
Now, since we know Intrepid will want to set these levers at a point where there will be enough players gaining corruption to make bounty hunters thing worth while, we know for a fact that corruption is going to be a mild deterrent and nothing more.
As to your comment of people camping at the node exit (I assume you mean town/city exit), sure, they can try.
If that becomes an issue, Intrepid can come up with a solution to that as well - one that you will no doubt complain about and state that said solution to the issue caused by players proves the developers are failing and that Ashes is a successor to FFXIV rather than L2.
Yeah, it may well be that it is considered all good. It also may not.
We know for a fact that caravans only need to get close to the city gates though.
This is one of the things I'm personally talking about relative to 'game feel'.
If a game is even remotely supposed to feel like 'a living world', something that emulates 'real life' but with much more adventures in terms of what a given set of people can do (I'm not saying that it SHOULD do this), a constant battle occurring outside the gates of a supposedly civilized city would feel out of place.
But it would still happen because of the limitation that games have, you can't just 'make all the people who do this stop being allowed to play at all', usually.
So if for whatever reason Steven wanted his game full of nodes and society and cooperation and all that to NOT feel like a given node is a big bloodbath arena 90% of the time, there would need to be some shift to that.
MMOs, particularly PvP MMOs, will probably never emulate that 'civilization with tension' flow without being Full Loot, Permadeath, or doing what Elite sorta-does. More power to those who want to play the Mad Max style, but it's just not going to be what most people come to a game like Ashes for, as the game is described right now.
This would obviously have to be counterbalanced by a limited amount of policies per node and several other good choices that some people would prefer over this policy. Cause otherwise it would just be a default one.
I'd probably go with some "taxes are lower, cause guards only attack reds" thing, but I'm sure that there's some economic consequences that I'm not foreseeing with that suggestion.
Install EVE Online, create a charater in the Caldari empire, buy yourself a shuttle, set your travel to the system 1DQ-A. This system is 100% player driven, it is a 100% full PvP and 100% loss... the system security level is -0.39 which means everybody can freely shoot each other... you can even shoot your own alliance with no consequences.
Look at 40 seconds, all those are players in a fight
1DQ-A
https://evemaps.dotlan.net/system/1DQ1-A
REDS = player enemies
Purple = fleet members
Anyone can go in and start shooting anyone, it is the most developed player driven area among all games in history.
Yes, that's why I said at the beginning, that it has to be either Full Loot or Permadeath, or what Elite sorta-does.
I was never saying that it doesn't work, but games like EVE and Elite have stuff in them that make this sort of thing matter a lot more, and while you could make a Fantasy MMO with some equivalents of those things (and I'm sure you personally would enjoy them), they end up much closer to survival games.
If you were just suggesting it to me as a thing for me to personally enjoy, I'll leave it to you to guess how much EVE I play.
I was just suggesting visiting 1DQ-A only, I don't even suggest playing EVE all around, since this system is really beautiful to see what players can do with no hand holding and no safe spaces. It's quite a sight to behold
I consider EvE to be a niche game.
Successful and fun for people who like that gameplay.
Even tough I played EVE since 2008, I don't recommend EVE to anyone anymore... the golden era is over now
Yeah, have to agree. 2007 here. Its just impossible to tell what direction they are going and they still have way too many needless barriers to entry. I would never be able to bring any of the my friends into that game. Where would be even start?
Well, CCP was too slow in listening the gankers, pirates, PvPers, militia players!
For years, the most combat oriented players told over and over that CCP had to prepare the new players in PvP, new players should be introduced since the tutorial missions in fighting other players, killing and dying.
Only in 2022 there's PvP achievements in the tutorial, nowdays you can see new characters and fresh new players asking for duels, asking to be shot, asking to kill them! They are much happier now, CCP finally understood that players have to be taught early on that dying and losing is fine..... this is important
A player having small lossses early on is healthier, he stays in the game, otherwise if he feels safe he will someday buy an Orca and autopilot his brand new Orca through low sec and lose it... look at me and the boys from low sec killing this dude:
https://zkillboard.com/kill/104292267/
In this kill I am "Arya Yeshe" and "Arya Is Awesome" from the Gwanko corporation, its my corp
CCP instead of listening the PvPers, they started listening the carebears and listening specific null sec blocks, so the game was changed... but the outcry only came with the Scarcity update, the scarcity update displease all the null bears and carebear miners all around. This the main reason why carebears are dangerous to game development, because they demand unfair one-sided systems. The scarcity update spread the ore across the universe and then the miners who multibox 20 accounts started this campaign against EVE in Reddit
So, CCP was being slow, being an authistic company who didn't really listen the player base. But CCP did many great things too, they worked a lot on a lot of things, the game in general got better. They failed in this:
Nowadays you die right in the intro, then you die in the PvP missions at least 20 times, there's an achieventment for dying, there is also a PvE impossible mission where you will only die... if you die then you complete the mission. Finally, CCP Games did the tutorial right and everybody is happy, the entire community and the new players liked this... just took 19 years
Seems there is no way around it now.
I do find it amusing that someone complaining that carebears are dangerous because they demand one sided systems is also the same person complaining about freeholds being PvP enabled, and also complaining about not being able to CC greens.
Both of these changes are pro-PvP'er.
PvPers:
Carebears:
So... the naive PvPer and the smart carebear will go for PvP freeholds, but smart PvPer and naive carebear will get the safe freehold
It should have a tiny yeald bonus, like 1% or 2%
This player is able to make the area around their freehold unplayable to solo players - but are able to do so with no risk. It is not appropriate to be able to set up a safe location to stage attacks, and then to retreat to safely in the event of unforeseen issues.
All other scenarios above are inconsequential to the discussion.
I won't click that
And it is precisely because of this, that I basically oppose the 'overall PvP setting' concept.
As soon as you are able to categorize a singular cause-and-effect game choice like this, it hints at it being moreso a 'noob trap' than a true choice, and I don't see the point of adding those to games.
So this falls into the same 'this is too simple, it needs to be more' that Corruption itself does, for me. They're equivalent in their failure to address what I personally consider to be the concern. At least with Corruption the dynamism of the player's location comes into play. A Freehold by definition lacks that dynamism.
We are not even interested in the same things, you are interesting in whatever XYZ reason, my reason is fun only. What you think it is important makes no sense to me who just want a game to have fun
This is all about having fun and how each person has fun his own way, when they are not having fun anymore then they have other choices to choose from
This is the only thing that matters
Alright then, no concerns there, have fun.
I figured it out that games with too many rules and constricted gameplay are boring, when people can derp around and have fun it makes momments unforgettable
I mean, this is clearly not true.
Unconstricted gameplay is only fun for the player type that gets enjoyment out of constricting the gameplay of others.
People would rather their gameplay be constricted by the game - where that construction is consistent - than be constructed by other players.
The point of all these "rules" Intrepid are setting up is to prevent players from constructing each others gameplay.
The owner and spouse should be safe on the freehold if they are non-combatants. If they are combatants/corrupted, normal rules apply. Normal rules apply for anyone else on the freehold, no matter their combatant status.