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
... ... ... ... ... Bots.
Gank - them - AAALL. !! (lol)
Gank them until the End of all time.
Gank them until the Ancients themselves are impressed by your Corruption.
Gank them until the People who created them are convinced they are wasting their Money and Ressources by keeping the very Computers running the Bots are "playing" Ashes of Creation with.
Or maybe just tell/ask your Mayor to declare "War" on the Node they are part of -> main Importance they are not part of your own Node - so that Players/Citizens of your Node can kill them repeatedly and ENDLESSLY without ever even getting corrupted for it.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Currently no guild !! (o_o)
The game is still relatively tame compared to full loot systems, mostly because it has to be in order for gear to have any real meaning unless they added in Asherons Call drop system which is based off of value.
Also, people with pvp rank should be incredibly low when accruing corruption, assassinations are a valid tactic and are always apart of a greater stratagem.
NCPs have to learn that they will be ganked from time to time and let it roll off their shoulders.
Just like PvErs and PvPers need to learn to work in unison, not constantly be against each other, it's not the way to be successful in this sort of environment.
This won't be something anyone could answer until launch or even several months after to see if the server population is stable enough to keep PvPers. From my experience in Archage, it had a healthy community of PvP with hundreds of active pirates and non pirate gankers along with an enemy faction. It all depends on where you want to farm or location of the node/resources and the risk the ganker wants to take.
If Bounty Hunting is rare it will be because it is boring or the risk to gank is too high. If the reward is high and respawn for the ganker is close by with minimal loss then it will happen all day every day, I suspect this will be high value end game zones and near major shipping lane/crossroad or harbors.
If it is a zone or two away or has minimal value in resources and takes 15-20 minutes to run back then ganking will only happen occasionally (a few times a day). Then you have the wandering gankers, they could stick to 1 zone all day or travel around several, ganking in one spot moving to the next like you would mining nodes and only see them every hour or two.
Infamous PvPers 99% of the server knows and hates will also be a thing keeping it alive.
Pretty much it's going to depend on the zone and it will happen enough as long as the player population stays high enough to support it.
Caravans have next to nothing to do with the frequency of people going corrupt.
Might not the "appropriate amount of green ganking" be the community's response to self-regulating to maintain appropriate levels of behavior?
And everything else dependant on one's self or guilds' actions/diplomatic approach and positioning in the world!
That depends on the corruption system. If the penalties are severe enough to make enforcement a deterrent, then the community can decide how much they are going to enforce. If the penalties are lax then there is a lot less than the community can do.
That`s the point, if the killing a green is not too severe, then instead of having game systems regulate server-acceptable ranges of player behavior the player community can.
I, for one, would much rather have reasonable capacity and accept reasonable consequence to kill that annoying bot that is always in my favorite spot than wait several days or weeks for the player initiated report to be actioned on.
That being said, corruption also has to be enough of a deterrent to hinder players from excessive ganking/camping.
Off the top of my head I would make every 3 corrupted kills increase your difficulty to perform in the game exponentially. So initially you wouldn't be drowning from the effects, but as you continue, each tier would be significantly more noticeable than the last. Maybe having the 3rd tier being an outright necessity to reduce corruption in order to be functional. So 3, youd be feelin a slight effect, 6 would be a very noticeable stat decrease, and 9+ corruption kills youd be sweating to take on a fight.
All of this doesnt factor in level differences contributing more corruption and what not which would obviously be a factor as well.
THAT's the Spirit !!! >;-)
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Currently no guild !! (o_o)
I'm sort of lumping this in with what you would call privateers, pirates or mercenaries but I think specific contract goals could serve the bounty hunter fantasy.
The carebear's wet dream is hunting "evil" people who killed farmers who play like bots, this will not be a thing in AoC, there will be barely any corrupted at all and the corrupted will be ready to wash the corruption asap and in a controlled manner
And meanwhile you will see other posts and youtube videos how AOC will be "Gang Fest"
Agreed.
The issue though is coming from the quote below:
And then we come to this point.
You don't just get corrupted for attacking and PKing people. You only get corrupted if they don't fight back???
What's the point then? Most people will look to fight back to some extent (depending on balance, which I will cover in the last part), meaning you can go and PK around to your heart's content, without gaining corruption. It's a big no-no for me.
An idea would be to introduce corruption that stacks just by attacking other non-combatant players, regardless if they fight back or not.
But then how do we do actual OW group PvP in this game? How do you balance this around group v group PvP, whether it's PvP for dungeons, open-world bosses, or something else? You just kill a few people, and suddenly you can't use your character, have a high chance to drop gear, etc. Which just makes it not worth to do it, even if the rewards might be good.
Caravans become a PvP zone, but will it be the same for Dungeons, world bosses, and other events where there might be competition? If that's the case, then yeah, corruption can work by just letting it stack if you just attack people, regardless if you kill them or not, or if they fight back or not. The fact that contested areas become PvP zones should more than make up for it, and allow for free PvP without worrying about corruption (isn't this something PvPers would actually prefer, idk let me know).
People can still choose to flag up, even if it's not for something valuable, but there are consequences. With PvP zones, there are no consequences, you fight it out, and a better group wins.
And finally, we come to this.
I totally agree with Noaani here, that this appears to be almost impossible (or rather, very-very tricky to make and actually balance).
From my understanding, it appears to me that PKing will in most cases not result in any punishment, as in most cases you will only turn combatant (as people WILL fight back).
Now that's an assumption on my part, which would depend on one main thing, but would lead to the same outcome:
How punishing is it to die as a non-combatant (what you drop, how much of it, etc.)?
If the risk of dropping stuff is high, and if there is a higher chance to lose valuable stuff, then players will fight back, just to prevent that loss of items. This in turn means that there won't be as many people going corrupt, because most fights will end up being combatant (attacker) vs combatant (that fights back).
Looking at it from PKers point of view, if they have a chance to obtain items from another person, they will look to PK them. If the amount of items, or just the type of items they can gain is low/not worth it, then people will probably be less incentivized to PK or finish off non-combatants, and the same non-combatants will be less incentivized to fight back, as they don't mind losing some not-that-valuable items if the other player turns corrupted.
In either case, the corruption system is...well...useless?
The first 2 scenarios are assuming what you lose is what other person gets.
Scenario 1: The rewards (loot drops) you get from killing non-combatants are high/valuable.
There will be less corruption, as people will look to fight back, in order not to lose stuff.
Let's say that 1 in 8 people you meet will be looking to PK you. In most cases, you will look to fight back, just to prevent loss of items, meaning very low number of PKers will actually go corrupted.
So let's make some assumptions: 12 out of 100 players you run into are looking to PK you. From those 12 PKers, maybe 1-2 will turn corrupted. So for every 1000 players, you have 10-20 corrupted players, probably generous, and even smaller number than that.
This maybe encourages PvP or rather it encourages fighting back, but you won't see that many corrupted players. In my opinion, this is not a great outcome, as the corruption system is clearly being underutilized, since players will mostly look to fight back to avoid the penalty of dying. You will rarely see players go corrupted, and other systems like Bounty Hunting, etc, are just there, but not being utilized that often.
Scenario 2: The rewards you get from killing non-combatants is low.
The incentive to fight back will be lower, and so will be the incentive to finish off non-combatants. Overall, this should keep the number of corrupted players, pretty much the same - low.
So in this case, we also have a small number of players actually going corrupt, but also potentially less incentive to attack other people in general (unless the reward isn't just coming from the loot dropped by players, but from other things like controlling an area and what not - in which case, this doesn't seem too bad compared to other options, but the issue remains - very low number of corrupted players).
Now we move onto hypothetical scenarios, where what you lose and what PKers gets is not the same.
Scenario 4: The reward you get from finishing off a non-combatant is high, but the actual amount/value of stuff the non-combatant loses upon death is low.
Example: I PK a non-combatant, I get 10 iron, the non-combatant only loses 1 iron.
People wouldn't mind dying without fighting back as much, while PKers will be more incentivized to actually kill those players for loot.
This is a better solution overall, but it can easily be tuned in a way that makes it worse. If the reward is too high, then PKing will just be way more common than it should be, and it will be a gank fest, which is again, BAD.
Players can chose to fight back if they wish to, if they don't, then they don't lose too much, other than the fact that they lose time, being messed with if they don't want to be.
Scenario 5: The reward you get from finishing off a non-combatant is low, but the actual amount/value of lost stuff is high for the non-combatant.
This scenario again just encourages people to fight back, and we see even less players going corrupted. Simple.
If anything, this encourages griefing. The reward for PKers doesn't come from obtaining loot, but from making other people lose stuff.
This is the worst option, and I feel like these people are the worst. I don't want to deal with this.
So what's the actual solution? Increasing/decreasing rewards has different outcomes, all of which are not great for different reasons.
Well, back to my reply to the previous quote above:
Introduce corruption that stacks just by attacking other non-combatant players, regardless if they fight back or not. It should scale with how much damage you do to them, if you just hit them with one basic ability, you shouldn't get too much corruption. If you end up killing them, you gain more.
To make PvP viable, at the same time you also make dungeons, areas around world bosses, and other POIs into Static PvP zones (just like with the caravans). There, you can freely PvP against other groups, and you don't have to worry about accumulating corruption.
Maybe I'm missing some details here, or I misunderstood how it will actually work.
Please do reply back to correct me if I'm wrong, if there's a certain situation/outcome I missed, to offer a different perspective, or just to add something I missed, rather than attacking me because I have a different opinion from yours.
Yes, obviously some people will fight back and that's great, because that's the entire point of purpleness decreasing death penalties. That would simply mean that the system is working as intended.
But A TON of people will not fight back. Even more will not fight back if it's well-known that corruption kicks your ass quite hard (as it does, from what's been said by Steven), because the victim would know that only a fraction of a fraction of attackers would be willing to go all the way.
And this is why I said that I'd expect/prefer ~1% of the concurrent players would go corrupt (if even that tbh). These would be the people who are either sure in their overwhelming power to avoid punishment (i.e. grind some mobs w/o dying to BHs and other players) or those who simply do not care about the penalty at all (I call these "career PKers").
And imo the corruption should be balanced in a way where your first kill (that is, you had a 0 PK count previously) gives you a fairly low amount of corruption, where the only ones who might be fast enough to kill you are other people in the vicinity, if the victim shouts about you being a PKer in chat.
Anything at 2-4 PK count should not only give enough time for the victim to come back to the same place and try to take revenge, but also give enough time for almost any BH on the continent to get to your place (~50min on mount if you are at the southern most point and the BH is at the northernmost point).
Anything beyond that should grow exponentially and VERY quickly to a point where you'll have to die a ton of times to even just remove the corruption. It should also pretty much disable your character's PKing ability after a single new kill and should drastically increase the chances of your dropping gear.
All the while PK counter decreasement methods are costly as fuck, the more PKs you have under your belt (but even the first one should still take quite a bit of money/resources and time to remove).
And imo the PK count should be account-wide, to keep any career PKer from multiplying their PKing ability by the number of chars we can have on one acc.
And, as I see it, this kind of balancing would lead to the numbers I gave in my initial comment. People will PK here and there for a good reason, the random greens would be less likely to fight back which would keep the PKers coming, while BHs can hunt anyone who's not on their very first kill.
Greens not fighting back also automatically boosts the amount of repeat PKers, because some people will be "forced" to PK another person over and over, if they can't remove them from a location in any other way.
The entire corruption system would have to be completely revamped if you gained corruption on hit rather than on kill, because the current super high penalties are a direct balancing tool for the amount of PKs that would happen in the game. This balancing tool influences a ton of other systems, like gear decay rates, XPing rates, player loot on death, etc.
those are clueless people's opinion.
there will be corruption for sure, but that will be minimal, and it will be with a specific purpose in certain situations like defending a farming spot or a boss, other than going red just because.
It completely makes sense, and it remains to be seen how it actually plays out when the game launches.
Again, in my opinion the need to fight back will be also impacted by stuff I mentioned, and if there's a higher incentive to fight back, people will do it - OR quit the game if they're really PvP averse.
But what about PKing, when it's groups trying to take control of a POI, world boss, dungeon? You'd think that would always be combatant vs combatant, but you could also have PvE players just farming, and then if a group comes in to take over the spot, they just die without fighting back, while the other group accumulates corruption. They could just go back to the spot, and try to continue farming, and if the other group tries to take them out again, they can again just die without fighting back.
At some point that other group will accumulate too much corruption.
I'm not sure how exactly this is going to work, but like I said, it would be a good idea to have certain areas like these as designated PvP zones.
There will be alliances of guilds who make it thier duty to safeguard regions and implement a degree of law and order.
Politics/economics could revolve around mutual relations between pvp guilds and non-pvp focused guilds/nodes.
Examples: nodes/guilds in an area peacefully running caravans, doing gathering, fishing, crafting etc can have mutual agreements with pvp oriented guilds to protect against ganking and aggression (or even war).
And even outside of GWs, it should only take one PK to make a group completely fail a boss or even a dungeon run, cause I sure as hell hope that pve is hard enough that removing a group's healer should wipe them. And ideally, it should be enough to simply put pressure on that healer to make their coordination crumble, cause he'll overextend on mana usage or cds.
Everyone is worried about too much / not enough ganking, but the systems really do serve to make a natural balance. What will probably be tweaked are the death/combat penalties, but I don't expect that to be finalized until beta.
It's a puzzle that no one has been able to answer for me haha. I think there needs to be corrupt players in the game to make this work, and to even make open world gathering have some risk to it. But corruption also has to be punishing enough to where the same people aren't constantly being ganked to the point of quitting the game.
I think corruption needs to be balanced to where a high tier gatherer runs the risk of being killed for their loot. Then I'd let us test that In Alpha 2, see if community solutions can protect the high tier gatherers, and look at emergent gameplay from that.
It's an odd assumption that the initiator of PvP will win most of the time against Greens who flag Purple.
Depends on how many Resources the target has and what those Resources are. Also depends on whether the target prefers to punish their PKers with Corruption.
Really can't make any valid assumptions at this point.
We need to be deep enough into A2 to have Classes and Augments to have a decent idea of how players are likely to react. And, even then, it will really be determined by playstyle demogrpahics for each Realm.
How about granting regional (node) mayors the ability to decide PK penalty severity through management sliders which could introduce significant points of differentiation between regions.
This customization would allow mayors to tailor penalties based on local player / community preferences and playstyles, fostering a deeper sense of player engagement and connection to regional governance. By adapting the severity of penalties, regions can develop unique cultures and play environments, enhancing the role-playing aspect of the game and providing a more immersive experience.
Additionally, this dynamic approach would create varied gameplay across different regions, making exploration and regional travel more intriguing for players.
I would like something similar but only when I forget that we have caravans.
Corruption is supposed to let players explore and gather somewhat less stressed than those who run caravans.
We seen the slow caravans meant for groups but they mentioned also solo caravans which will be faster than a player can walk. Those will be ambushed if they are not careful.
I see no reason to try to gank explorers and farmers except when
- they are acting as spies, observing what other players do
- they gather with good reason from places which some bigger guilds consider their own territory
I mean the game will be boring if big guilds will vote to lock out soloers and small guilds from gathering in a specific area.
The idea is okay, it just doesn't mesh well with existing systems.