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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.
Comments
This argument, I heard it a million time already "you force me to pvp so I stop the game"... Classical...
You can also decide to don't start the game at all if you already know that you must PvP in AOC and if you already know in advance that you will stop the game because of PvP.
It same if I would tell I want to have the career of Mike Tyson but I don't want to fight.
But you can also think smart and tell that you love the boxe environnement, you like to train hard but you can avoid sparrings. It's also fine )
But that's the point of the thread.
Vyril is asking those who haven't 'decided to not start the game', why they are still here.
If their answer was 'for the PvP!' then probably they weren't the target of the question. So ofc you're going to get a few people who answer like this. The only possible 'victory' you could get in this argument is convincing one more person to not play. They're not going to sway Steven at this point.
I'm curious because my main experience with this system is L2 and there it's either you farming mobs or you running around the place w/o touching mobs. And mobs were valuable, so, imo, any pvp around them was meaningful. I expect majority of AoC's gathering to be the same as mob farming, with pvp happening for resources, but there's also a chance that people will in fact kill others purely for loot.
Hence the question. If PW had player loot on death then Ashes might in fact have more PKers than L2 did.
It does, but it's more like AA/BDO in how, where and when you are likely to be attacked and can drop things.
I'd say you could still make the comparison though.
Why wouldn't people kill others purely for the potential loot though? I thought that was 90% of the point of the system...
The question confuses me so I'm sorry if this doesn't answer it but they don't always have loot and if they do, you usually don't know how much loot they have so it's hard to tell if the risk is worth it. The loot they have might not be that valuable to you. You might be in a populated area so you know if you go red, someone will probably jump you before you can get away. They also might kill you.
Brony mentioned "menial tasks", which, I'd assume, would not be happening in valuable locations, so the only "good reason" for PKing would be the potential loot of the victim. And if PW also had player loot and PKers there killed others during "menial tasks", then I could see how Ashes would have that as well.
At which point the potential amount of PKing in AoC goes up, when compared to L2's.
There are several possible reasons for the presence of PvE players on the forum who are waiting for the game.
First of all, and quite legitimately on their part, the game hasn't been released yet, so they're waiting to make up their own minds.
Then, the slightly more perverse reason is that some "PvE only" players will try to put pressure on intrepid by trying to convince them that the game will be a total failure and that 95% of players will leave because of overly aggressive PvP mechanics.
This will last until the game's release and then get worse afterwards, as these same people will post complaints every time they are killed and dramatize their terrible existence in AOC. They'll threaten to quit the game.
Then some well-known gaming sites will take an interest in these "pseudo-cases", and write articles headlined "Intrepid struggles to retain players due to PvP". This will attract the entire MMO community of anti-PvP trolls who will come to ruin AOC.
For this reason, I really hope that the PVX system and rules will be the top priority of Alpha 2 and Beta testing, so that the foundations of the rules are established and don't change fundamentally in the future.
To be honest, I disagree with your entire premise here.
The value of any reward in the game is directly tied to the time spent to get it including any PvP, not just on the PvP.
Kickstarter Page:
https://kickstarter.com/projects/1791529601/ashes-of-creation-new-mmorpg-by-intrepid-studios/description
Transcript from Ashes Wiki:
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Talk:2017-04-30_Video_-_Kickstarter
While they don't spend a whole lot of time on it, they do mention at 2 separate points that PVP is meaningful and that you need to protect your cities and your home from total destruction in PVP.
Yes, I know the video does - I said the page doesn't.
It is reasonable to assume that anything that is a key aspect of the game would be mentioned on the kickstarter page itself.
If you are going to look back 2 weeks in the past through a thread, it is worth seeing if anyone has already said the thing you are thinking of saying.
Farming spots had priorities. So if you went farming the best spot, PvP was inevitable. Thing is... you then keep going down in the list, until eventually there are no spots left to farm.
You didn't drop loot, ever, unless you were red, in that case there was a chance.
But that's the problem imo. Attacker doesn't know what they have, but the person being attacked does. If I am carrying lots of materials because I have been gathering, I am FORCED to PvP back. It doesn't matter what I want, it doesn't matter that the enemy will go red, I have to PvP back because otherwise I lose a lot of progress.
Attacker going red does nothing for me, on the contrary, if they go red it means I lost a lot more than just by fighting back.
Corruption it's just there to avoid griefing, but if you have valuables on you there's no other option than to fight back
No no. You are not forced to do anything. It’s probably the smart decision to fight back a lot of the time, but there’s probably plenty of times that it’s worth to let them go red.
People always say this stuff in the context of PvP, but you drop all those resources if you die to a mob too, and any time you die to a mob unless you were recently fighting you have the green death penalties.
It’s not intended to necessarily be viewed as timed loss either. It’s just a mechanic of the game and it’s factored into the experience. Dropping resources, dying and experience debt are just a part of it.
PvE and PvP content intertwined.
But I do agree that the game should have several locations per each resource. Not "instanced" amounts of locations, but still several.
This is why I'd love if BH system had a "return victim's loot" feature. So there would be a choice for the victim. You either fight immediately and might win, or at least lose less. Or you die on the spot, suffer general penalties and hope that a BH can come soon enough before the PKer goes green again.
I'm not sure what you mean. You seem to be implying that the more time it takes to get something, the more value it has which is false. Yes, more valuable things usually take longer to acquire but the more time it takes to acquire something doesn't increase it's value. If i auto-attack a boss to death, it's not going to drop more valuable loot because i took longer to kill it.
But if you will kill this same boss several time you have more chance to get something with value. And it takes more time... So he is right.
I'll share 3 of my original expectations:
Node Sieges in order to ensure a Metro that allows my Race to complete Racial progression.
Caravan defense and Caravan attacks in prep for Castle Sieges.
And... some Ashes of CReation version of...
"If I have to kill dryads to siphon their Life magic and convert it into Shadow energy which powers the Stealth abilities for my Rogue... any player characters who try to stop me from killing dryads will just have to die!!"
You need to PvE to increase your character's power which you need for PVP and Pvp is a tool you can use to control PvE content. Not 3 but I'm sure you could find some way to break it down.
I think that is how I originally understood PvX.
But, I now consider Steven's vision of PvX to mean that, as much as possible, PvE and PvP are 100% fused.
Which, for me, is more PvP than on an EQ/EQ2/WoW PvP server. And even an EQ/EQ2/WoW PvP-Optional server is too much PvP for me to feel comfortable.
Which is why it's counter-productive when I ask Steven if Ashes is PvP-centric -because EvE and ArcheAge are too PvP-centric for me- for Steven to answer: "Ashes is not PvP-centric, Ashes is PvX."
Especially with his follow-up that Corruption should make Ashes PvP comfortable for players who typically focus on PvE.
What originally attracted me to Ashes was the example of the Winter Dragon that causes a perpetual WInter across the Region until the Winter Dragon is killed. The Risk of failing/dying is high in small groups -even with a few Raids or a few Guilds- which means that rivals will have to work together to rid the threat the WInter Dragon poses.
The true Reward is ending the perpetual Winter. And that goal should have enough primacy for everyone in the Region to set aside rivalries until the Winter Dragon is slain.
Sure... if I do 5% of the damage to the Winter Dragon, I hope to gain at least a Dragon Scale for my contribution to ending the threat, but the actual Reward is that we can finally move on to the resources avalilable during Spring and we can rebuild the Node services disabled by the Perpetual Winter.
I think Noanni and his Community are hoping to hear more about those kinds of events... epic PvE battles where PvP is unlikely to interfere. (Though, I think they would expect to among those dealing most of the damage since they are top-end raiders.)
But, what we've come to learn bit by bit in the past year is that Steven believes that such a battle would not have sufficient adrenaline rush without the "Risk" of PvP also being high.
So... it's not really about hating PvP.
It's realizing after 5 years... that PvP is intended to be inextricably tied to everything.
Because, for Steven, PvE is not fun without the adrenaline rush PvP provides.
McStackerson has a good summary, not every aspect has to be a literal 1 to 1 outcome.
I'll give what I look forward too for a direct PvX interaction.
Noanni said earlier in the thread what they want, they want enough instanced content to fill a 3 day raid week and i was pointed out how rewards from that content would impact the rewards in the world.
Just because pvp can happen everywhere doesn't mean it will or is intended to. The Pvp element of the game isn't about making the encounter itself fun. PvE content serves as potential objectives for PVP so if anything, it's the other way around.
I can see that they might think instanced content is the only answer.
Seems like that's unlikely to be the way Ashes attempts to support a community like Noanni's.
Every time Steven talks about Risk v Reward - he focuses on the adrenaline rush from PvP.
Anything of value feels more like a worthy accomplishment if you had to fight and win against other players to achieve. Both Steven and Margaret talk about how all their most memorable moments are their accomplishments from PvP.
Even Freeholds - Margaret regales about the pride people will have knowing they have the Freehold that survived PvP the longest.
So... while the rush of adrenaline being present in every encounter may not be a goal for you as player - it appears to be a goal of Steven's. As much as possible, he want's Risk v Reward to be a core pillar of every aspect of the game.
And when Steven talk about Risk v Reward, he means PvP. Also, typically the Rewards he talks about equals Loot (Resources); not "objectives".
(I think Steven's vision of PvP being ubiquotous is not limited to PvP combat - which is why he hopes everyone will be contemplating economic warfare everytime they choose which bags to take when they leave to go out Gathering.)
While this is true, it is also true that if I fight you for a boss, it isnt going to drop better gear. It may be that if I fight you for it, you dont get any gear and I do, but if you just auto attack a boss you wont get any either.
Again, time is the only thing players put in to an MMO, this is the baseline. You need to put time in to getting geared up, time in to learning your class, your role in a raid, and the encounter itself, then you can spend time working to kill the encounter.
If I am working on an open world encounter and you are trying to stop me, you are spending your time in order to prevent me getting the rewards I was after by spending my time on that boss.
If I go out harvesting and you attack me, you are risking your time via PvP and potential corruption in order to take the results of the time I spent harvesting.
Spending time on something isnt always a guarantee, but time is the only thing we have to spend.
If I take something from you in PvP, you have three options to get it back. Spend time fighting me for it, spend time earning gold to buy it, or spend time to get a new one.
It literally all comes down to spending time.
That doesnt mean we can increase our rewards for time spent by working slowly, all that amounts to is an inefficient use of time.
- Gathering in areas where Corruption is active.
- 80% of Dungeons are open world. (Noaani's group wants to be able to thrive in the 20% of Dungeons that are instanced.)
- Node Wars.
So... yes.. these are all examples of my original concept of PvX. All of the above fit within my comfort zone.Open Seas is a signifcant change to the game design as of 1 year ago...
So that is not included in what was originally presented as PvX.
I would now say that Steven's vision of PvX is that everything a player does has the potential to include PvP. And there really isn't a need to mention the reverse for PvE because the foundation of RPGs is that RPGs are PvE.
Keep in mind, the kind of encounters I am talking about would see top guilds spent 3,000+ combined hours working on the content before getting any rewards. This comes in the form of an expected minimum of 500 attempts to kill before the first successful kill (kind of the entry point to top end content), 10 minutes of time per kill, and 40 people in the raid at a time.
500*10*40=200,000 minutes (3,333 hours) with no reward.
The notion of having top end content in an MMO is a different calculation to what most P vP players are used to seeing, but making claims such as there being no risk is off the mark. If nothing else, the risk is the opportunity cost of that 3,333 hours of time spent. This in itself would make an instanced encounter like what I am talking about the highest risk activity in a game like Ashes - and that is before you consider the suggestions I have made for adding PvP back to the situation
If the raid is fighting that boss as Combatants, it's half-normal death penalties.
So... it's more "Risk" attempting to complete that dungeon as Non-Combatants than it is as Combatants.
I think Noaani doesn't want to waste more time being distracted from defeating the boss by other players who love PvP.
.....?