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
So you are suggesting that lack of information better ecourages people to make the risky choice of combat. That's the rationalization you are going with?
It isn't griefing if there is a very easy means by which to outright prevent it (a direct quote from Trion, in fact).
You are now assuming a leveling/progression system different to any other game. Every MMO I have played sees your abilities increase in damage output simply by leveling up.
Since the idea with Ashes is that you can go deep or wide with your abilities, this requires that they increase in damage as you level up, as per every other game.
But it isn't easy.
First of all, you need to wait for the player to make that mistake you talked about above. This may simply not happen (if the player sees you, they are likely to be more cautious).
Then you need to take in to account that you are basically creating your character around being able to do this - which is going to leave it less effective in general combat.
Then you also need to factor in that a single unlucky crit could well result in corruption, despite your efforts. All of this in order to avoid corruption that only takes a few minutes to work off...
The easy path is to kill a player, take the corruption hit and work it off.
Nah, attempting to memorize how to be a good player in EQ2 would have seen you labeled the worst player on the server.
This is because (within reason) the damage output and recast timer of abilities were dynamic. The game was all about decision making based on information at hand, not on memorizing anything.
Hell, most players didn't even remember the proper names of their abilities - they didn't need to.
And I see this as players making the correct decision based on having propper information. It isn't "easier", you still need to know what to do in a given situation, you just have a better idea of the situation you are in.
You can redirect mobs onto attackers with or without hp bars.
Casuals armed with as much information as possible can make better choices. And will better understand when they can fight and when they can't. Hiding information denies them of this ability to learn and leaves them in the dark. Only adding to their frustration.
Im not sure any of this has to do with protecting players of any kind. It's just more gate keeping that can be exploited by the most experienced.
Steven has even kinda addressed the "lvl50 vs lvl20" situation in his design, because afaik nodes will have high lvl mobs relatively near to lowbie ones (due to how node lvl ups work), so there'd still be a fairly high chance that another lvl50 might be doing smth near that lvl20 and could help him out in some way.
Now there's definitely argument to be made that if attackers immediately became corrupted then everyone and their mother in the vicinity would gladly go hunt a PKer, but this just comes back to the answer of "changing this part of the system defeats the purpose of having this system".
Ashes could definitely vary drastically from my experience because it has player looting, but I feel like this part of the design would only play into my argument, because now there's more incentive for people to try and kill the target with green penalties rather than purple ones, because greens give up more loot. L2 didn't have player loot (outside of PKers), so majority of attacks were either to remove the target from the location, to enact revenge/guild order, or to simply grief the victim.
I'd also be fine if the flag state lasted longer if the attacker "slapped" the victim for a long period of time. This way the risk would be higher (especially if AoC's flag state remains through death, which I hope it does).
Buy why shouldn't a player who attacks a green not be instantly tagged? Why shouldn't those around him be allowed to help him without incurring flags themselves?
Tagging only on kill allows the griefer to set up the scenario to his liking.
Who cares about "the point of using the system"? Change it to make it work.
If we are truly being "real pvpers" and not just gankers and exploiters, why should the PKer not have to earn his PK?
I mean, I'm not convinced that this would matter at all - but if it did, surely the best solution is the direct solution.
It's not as if it is a needed mechanic.
Like I said, if 50vs20 is not a real possibility - it's not a concern in this context.
If working it off is in fact that short - great, hope people PK more than they abuse the PKing system. But, supposedly, the higher your PK count - the longer it'll take to work it off. So if your char's explicit reason for existing is harassment of other players in the way discussed - you'd want to minimize your PK count as much as possible, so that you can keep doing what you want to do (the harassing that is).
Then I guess we'll have to see if Ashes will be reactive or proactive. L2's pvp was usually about knowing what your enemy will most likely do as their next move, so you'd try and either prevent that or prepare your reaction in the best way. And "going off script" would quite often mess people up quite nicely.
Which is why I initially said that we simply disagree on what we see as "skill"
The main context here has been "a victim gets attacked to the point of near-dying, but w/o dying to the attacker".
Let's say the victim was willing to fight back. How does seeing or not seeing the attacker's hp matter here? I'd assume you're presuming that the attacker would somehow be not at full hp when he's attempting this? I'd say that's a stupid attacker, but ok, I can give you a point in this particular situation.
But even if the attacker is not at full hp in that situation, the only useful info the victim can get about the attacker's hp is by hitting him, right? Cause otherwise you'd have no context for what "50% nameplate decay" even means in relation to your strength.
And as I said before, unless the disparity between hp and atk values is so damn huge that we can have both thousands of hp on a hundred-hp char and hundreds of atk on thousand-hp chars - knowing the target's hp won't matter when you're trying to decide whether to fight them or not.
Sure, it might help the attacker, cause then he'd know that the victim is already low so he's free to attack and know for sure that he'll win, but wouldn't that simply prove my argument? And if the victim obviously knows that they're at low hp and then gets hit by a dude - wouldn't the victim have the same options of "die to make him pk", "fight back to decrease lost loot", "try to run".
The argument of "visible hp leads to more pvp" only works when attackers are at low hp themselves, but outside of big battles I don't think I've seen a single damn attacker (let alone harasser) who'd start attacking another player while not being at full resources. I'm sure it must've happened at some point somewhere, but I honestly can't recall a single instance of that. Though even then, the victim's decision-making usually relies way more on how hard they were hit with the initial attack, because "not dying" is usually higher on the thought priority list than "can I kill him". Well, at least in my experience.
PKers are not "real pvpers" imo, because there was no "pvp". The victim didn't respond, so the attacker's actions might've as well been "hitting a wall".
And my distinction between pvper and pker comes exactly from the L2's system, because the difference mattered there. If you PKed someone - you were a scum, if you killed someone in pvp - it depended on the situation, but you were definitely better than scum.
Charging an attacker with killer's penalties does not seem right imo. If you were talking about smth different, please explain in another way.
I would definitely agree to this change, mainly because I don't see a point in players dropping anything on death at all (again, outside of PKers).
We already have caravans and node sieges to distribute player loot at a large scale. Why have small scale distribution on top of that - I dunno. Obviously this change would require a change to the mules as well, but we've heard so fucking little about them that I don't really know what to think about them at this point.
I've seen it a few times - quite a few times actually. Attacks of opportunity and such. Attack now or miss your chance type scenarios.
Happened in Archeage often - a player getting near an area where you couldn't or wouldn't attack them for what ever reason, if you aren't at full strength but think you can take them on, you would.
You are describing in your own paragraphs scenarios where it could possibly be important.
You are also describing, with the language you are using, how its not that big of a deal.
So if it does influence decision making in some scenerios and it does not matter in plenty of other scenarios, why are we taking away hp bars to combat a singular exploit instead of adjusting the corruption system to account for this single exploit?
Not seeing HP fundamentally changes how you experience pvp, how you decide on what actions to take, and how much of yourself have to spend to win a fight. Hiding information prevents you from making informed decisions. And for what? A single exploit?
I'm not specifically arguing it shouldn't happen - I'm not concerned either way.
I'm just saying that if there is an issue where people are attacking players in order to have mobs kill them so the attacker can loot their corpse that the mob killed becomes an actual problem, then the simply and direct solution is to make it so PvE deaths don't drop materials.
Keep in mind, I don't think that specific scenario would happen - I'm just pointing out that this is the simple solution if it did.
Logic and reason simply don't suggest that removing information from people making decisions is a good idea.
you could even see it in other threads in the past. people asking for an inspection functionality so they can pick and choose their battles or even swap gear to counter whoever they are trying to fight XD
you seem to think that pvp will go like this:
"hi fellow adventurer, i was farming on this spot first. i challenge you to a duel for the spot".
when you are going to fight for a spot, you dont talk, you attack first. why? because the opponent will start the battle with less health than you and if you dont hit first, the other guy will. people will fight for spots and bosses and pk even if they cant see the enemy's hp.
it seems to me that you want to see it just so you can pick who you are going to attack, which means less pvp XD, because if you had a valid reason to pvp, you will pvp, but by seeing that the other person is much stronger than you, you will not pvp (it is assumed that if you are both farming on the same spot, and have the same gear, you have similar strength).
for example, if you are level 30, and you see someone wearing a level 50 weapon, you most likely wont attack that person even if you have a valid reason to pvp, because now you are 100% sure he is much stronger than you. however, if you see him wearing a level 30 weapon, and you have a valid reason to pvp, you will most likely hit him a few times then wait for him to hit back.
when you can see that the other person is much stronger than you, you will definitely decide to not attack that person. seeing the enemy hp is the equivalent as seeing that they have better gear or a better weapon in the previous example. and once you are level 50, then it doesnt matter because everyone will have the hp of a level 50 character or lower, so people will either be as strong as you or weaker.
then you can run into a mob if you are going to die in pvp so that the mob finishes you off and you avoid the penalty.
when you change one thing, it affects other things. a simple solution might not be so simple after all.
Well said!
You're probably right
Fair argument - though I would argue that if your attacker can't kill you in the time it takes you to get to those mobs and for those mobs lower rate of damage (in comparison to a player) to kill you, then they don't deserve your loot.
Remember though that we don't have any strong reason to believe that Steven wants to encourage 'overall PvP', far less 'fair PvP' in the game. We only know that Steven wants to encourage 'grouping' and 'the feeling of risk', and perhaps some sociability.
Both of these goals are technically achieved more efficiently with the 'last hitter only, partially obscured HP' system. The downside is that the specific approach taken is one that makes the PvP itself from the attacker side less 'enjoyable' or 'engaging', but I don't actually feel like this has ever been implied as a design goal.
So either they haven't used a 'better' system because they want it to be L2-like but harsher (and from everything I've learned of L2, most L2 players do not want the specific 'jumpscare' PvP to be experienced by the average player, and they consistently claim that the average player does not need to be worried about experiencing it too often)...
Or they haven't used a better system because they can't come up with one or have directions to not change it if that can be avoided/before Alpha-2, which is a thing I'd expect for messaging reasons.
If we think about it from the perspective of what the L2 players generally tell us, hiding HP isn't really about protecting from much, it's almost explicitly a PvP deterrent. In a roundabout way I'm saying that the whole point is to prevent you from making informed decisions. It's not 'an exploit in a system intended to be based around skillful play', it's directly going 'here's some RNG to replace informed skill to make this riskier'.
First of all, seeing how much HP someone has isn't a question here. The argument is to see the percentage of HP they have left.
Second, I will guarantee you that at max level, once the game has been out a while, there will be a range of at least 4x in regards to fewest to most HP.
Yes, for a single exploit.
Also, just to make it clear, we have been mostly talking about "victim dying to the mob for loot", but the main part of the exploit is the "avoidance of becoming a PKer". You can listen to Steven explaining the reasoning behind the current system: "you can attack a person, but you don't know their exact hp so you might overshoot and become a PKer".
Except I feel like Steven is basing his own thoughts on the same player loot potential, while completely forgetting about people whose preferred gameplay will be just going around and bringing people to low hp and holding them there, preventing them from doing any pve content. That is also "avoiding becoming a PKer", and is why my main issue with what's being discussed is not the flagging system and instead simply the ease with which you can use the exploit.
Imo hp visibility negatively influences pvp, because it makes the predators have an easier way to hunt prey, while there's barely any benefit to the victim.
To me the meaning behind "for what, just an exploit?" is the same as "for what, just knowing that attacker is at low hp this time?". I see both of these things as rare happenings, but from my experience having visible hp would increase the rate of the former happening, while not really increase the rate of the latter. If anything, it would do the opposite and the attackers would now always attack at full resources (especially if out-of-combat regen is as fast as Mag wants it to be
However, there were still plenty of times where you would attack someone while you weren't at full HP/mana. There were times you would attack people while not even in your combat gear.
This is in a game where enemy players can immediatly look and see both of these things to be true.
If it is this aspect that you are concerned with, then shouldn't that concern extend to groups of players attacking a player, then leaving the killing blow to a specific player? Everyone was a party to killing the player, but not everyone has corruption.
How is this not the same thing?
Ugh..
Then I go back to my earlier comment. Preventing me from making informed decisions is a downgrade to the overall game.
Honestly if they were to ever actually get rid of HP bars it would cause a riot amongst non L2 players. No thank you
But in cases where one of the group still becomes a PKer - that's not an avoidance of the punishment. If there was some effect on the mob for killing players - I think I'd be more fine with the current design. But in the case where the mob finishes off a player instead of a player attacker - nothing happens.
This does bring to mind another semi-solution. What if mobs became socially aggro at a big radius against the victim's attacker(s), once the victim dies to the mob? So, in a way, a continuation of what you suggested. Ideally mobs hits would then also remove the flag state, so that the attacker suffered green penalties if he were to die to the mobs, but I feel like that might be a pain to properly implement.
I'd be completely fine with visible hp if the successful griefer got immediately ganged up on by mobs afterwards. This still doesn't remove the ability to grief in this way, but it reduces the amount of attempts at the grief (given that this feature is proven to work of course) and it also doesn't influence the flagging system in a negative way.
Hell, this would be a pvx way of addressing the issue!
You worry more than Steven that the game might not be successful? He spent 7 years making the game and now he has competition coming. It is unavoidable to see players actually trying out and playing the other mmos. But we already payed for alpha 2 access (except a few who just received the key for free). The other mmos will have hard time getting as much money out of players after they launch unless they are better mmos.
Casuals must learn to talk in local chat and node chat, find out why some players drive them away, find out the community habits... Can be that there is some soft friction between nodes, farming each other's spots or could be there are bots farming too.
If we worry about the players who will join only at the proper release... then I think we should not worry about them right now. We will see how Alpha 2 is and Steven will most likely balance things based on real data, seeing how we play. Steven seems sensitive to what streamers talk and those will get access to the game too. Who knows how the game will change.
And this is one of the bigger reasons for my worry.
The pvp system is set up in the current way because Steven likes it that way. But if he gets overwhelming feedback of "this system is too abusable", I feel like he might change it to smth worse (well, worse for me of course).
But yes, testing will ultimately show us how spooky this truly is, if at all.
In fact, it's worse than just avoiding that punishment. It is also potentially wasting BH time.
If me and my guild are in something of a disagreement with some other guild, you had better believe we would be running around with a singular undergeared character at all times. This is our designated PK character, and so is the one that gains corruption.
Should a bounty hunter see them on their map and come looking for a kill, they will be more than disapointed with any drops that may result.
So really, we are pushing the penalty (time spent without gain) on to some random bounty hunter.
It is my expectation that this would be the case regardless. Hate lists on mobs should include everyone in the fight, and once the primary threat is dead, the mob should naturally move on to the second character on that list - unless that character is in some manner an ally.
A half decent threat system would do this.
I mean, we've given you reasons as to why we don't think it would happen, I'm yet to see a reason as to why it would. Not why it would be theoretically possible, but why it would be worth the time and effort for someone to put in - why it would be easy.
To me, it really wouldn't be viable, and the only way I see it ever happening is in a targeted manner where there is a specific victim in mind and all effort is put to that end (a disproportionate effort based on the possible results).
BH's job is a whole separate topic. I doubt that majority of BHs will go into that job with hopes of great income (unless the system itself pays out a lot, while also somehow not abusable). If BH kills your PKer - he did his job and the system will give him smth for it.
And like I said, what I'm suggesting is a continuation of this, where other mobs pile on the attacker as well, rather than just the one(s) that were fighting the victim. I say this mainly because I'm sure that attackers would pick on weaker people, who's mobs would not necessarily kill the attacker as easily.
Now simply change the target in that "targeted manner" to "anyone", and you have yourself the reason. I've known griefers who only did this as their main means of gameplay, because they enjoyed it. I've known guildies who did this to their presumed enemies, but did it on alts as to avoid a war with them.
I already said, if times have truly moved on from such people existing in mmos - great. I'm simply not sure they have.