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
In a PvE area claimed by hundreds of players for legendary materials with spots to defend. Winning a PvP in this area should at least offer the reward of being able to farm on your spot for 20 minutes before the guy comes back for revenge.
These unfair PvP where you can fight in loop the whole day are boring and waste time.
In less interesting areas it's okay to spawn within 1 min of death because it doesn't impact gameplay and there's no reason to punish the player who's already been walking for an hour to get there.
So devs need to differentiate between recognized/interesting/attractive and desolate/poor locations that are of little interest before the distribution of respawn points.
If it takes 20 minutes to get back - if we assume that is the absolute maximum range - then that means a respawn point covers a circle with a diameter that would take 40 minutes to traverse. Two of these respawn points would then take 80 minutes to traverse, which is larger than the time it takes to traverse a continent.
In regards to your point that respawn location should be based on giving players time to farm a spot after winning PvP - that player that you beat in PvP shouldn't consider it worth going back to that location if that is where you want to be, they should consider it a better use of their time to go somewhere else instead.
Basically, the issue you are attempting to address here with respawn points can't be addressed with respawn points, but can be addressed by better over all content design.
To your point about more or less interesting areas and respawn points - that is simply something that doesn't work in Ashes. Respawn points are going to be static, but the content (and thus where interesting areas are and are not) will not be static.
As a general idea, it is a complete non-starter as far as I am concerned.
Regarding the PvP players, we all know how it works. A large % of those loosing a fight will come back for revenge. Especially if it takes only 1 min to come back. If it takes 5 - 10 min to come back, they will certainly go somewhere else to farm.
According to the fact that there is no fast travel, I am not surprised about walking 40 min or 80 min.
This is exactly what happened in L2 when people were fighting for spots. Only a select few are stubborn enough to keep losing over and over again. Also, don't forget that even if it's just a pvp death, you're still suffering penalties. So a few deaths will bring your stats down, which will make it even harder to win against the same opponent.
So it's the same overall situation, but instead of wasting general people's time (i.e. those who might be dying to mobs or are PKed) you'd just have more pvp in the game, on the off chance that there are in fact quite a few stubborn people willing to keep coming back to die in pvp.
Of course this applies to you being the loser in that situation and not being willing to come back. But this would also be true in what you're suggesting, cause, as you yourself say, you wouldn't want to come back if it was a 10 minute track to do so.
So, once again, there's a higher chance of having more content per hour of gameplay if you keep the respawns closer to PoIs.
Walking is also content otherwise Intrepid would add some fast travel options. I'll wait and see but I'm not sure these almost instant reanimation near your death point you suggest will bring quality PvP.
Non-stataic respawn points is probably not a good idea.
If we assume that respawn points are tied to node state, then every node would have to have one within it. If we assume it is only nodes over a specific level, that means the game launches with no respawn points. If we assume respawn points are not tied to the node system, that is a whole nother level of complexity in world building that really isn't worth it.
To your point about PvP players coming back for 'revenge', beat them harder then, so they don't. If they keep coming back, keep beating them. If they bring friends and beat you, awesome, look at that great PvX experience you are having! Way better content than walking.
10-20 minutes?????
If I die, and have to spend 20 minutes to run back, I'd just log off and play something else. I have limited free time during a day, there's only 24 hours in a day, 8 of which you hopefully spend sleeping. I am NOT spending 20 minutes trying to go back to a fight.
Alternatively, I'd just forget about the fight and go do something else in game.
This just ruins the PvP. Basically, whoever wins the first fight, wins the war. It's extremely stupid, and I'd hope people would think a bit more about what they're trying to suggest.
Imagine there's a world boss, which takes maybe 10-15 minutes to kill, if you're just trying to kill it without having to worry about PvP. Basically, you get one shot to contest it, if you die, by the time you respawn and return, the boss will be dead.
I love to bring this game up here, so I'm just going to do it again.
Archeage.
You had several respawn points on the map, and during war, there was only 1 active for each faction.
Each respawn point had a small area around it which made you invulnerable (and unable to cast abilities).
I see no problem with that solution.
For larger events like kraken, a spawn would be further away, since the boss is in the middle of an ocean, so it would take at least 5 min to respawn and regroup.
People just look at how long it takes to run back to a fight, but they keep forgetting one thing, which is respawn timer. Respawn timer is what prevents you just respawning constantly and going back into a fight. The more you die, the bigger the timer.
The travel time shouldn't take more than 3-5 minutes. If you keep going back to a spot, and you keep dying, the respawn timer increases.
No this is a fact. Walking in Ashes is a content otherwise there would be fast travel. Walking = discovery = immersion. You gonna hate this game if a 5 min itinerary is too long for you.
Id also like these to recharge cds faster as a means to make cd usage not so punishing for open world content.
So if the areas are so small you get to one side to to the other in like 30 sec to two min sounds like respawns need to be on nodes only is mandatory.
Though there is a difference between gameplay and hearing their rough numbers, that is most likely the more fast safe route to get to a node. And not you going towards a mob spot with enemies, and definitely not factoring if you are in a ow dungeon.
All time needs to be factored in which they are talking about running not running and getting towards the content you were doing and getting pvp over. Which will include getting pass mobs and such.
20 minutes would be thein the deepest part of a dungeon for players that know how to kill the most minimum amount of mobs and get back to people quickly. Which would give you time to kill the boss, but more than likely it will prob be easy mode and you will spawn near where you died.
Which will lead to the bdo issue where its a infinite battle beside a spawn point since there will be no point doing pve content since you have to pvp until they they stop.
Also im getting annoyed people are talking about pvp deaths, like no one where is going to make a argument for corruption that is going to be les than 1% of the pvp in the game. Guild wars / node wars where you don't have penalties is what people will be dealing with.
Also i feel like people that have not played pvp recently don't understand how players will be, even if you can't win so long as you are strong enough to kill them and prevent them from doing the boss is a win. ITs about who wants to waste more time.
If anyone here is making a argument that the team gets wiped easily and isn't a challenge id ask why even bring that up in this disccusion as a valid point. The real core should be competitive fights in what we are referencing, not arguing this group is 10* stronger so suddenly all players wont have to worry about pvp if you wipe them fast. (0 sense in a disccusion) .
Where are you getting 1% from? Corruption is said to be rare but also there is an entire bounty system that depends on corrupt activity to be relevant. This can mean less common than mutual pvp but enough to keep systems viable. 1% would make bounty hunter a pointless endeavor
Which would remove the risk of going back with your loot. And maybe that's what Steven wants, but I'd imagine he would've simply said "you respawn in the node center" rather than "closest respawn point".
I don't believe we've seen even a single mob that can't be outrun so far.
And I highly doubt Intrepid will have endless leashes on mobs (even if I want that).
So you just run past those mobs on your mount and zoom towards your death location. And yes, this does include ow dungeons, because this is literally how L2 worked.
Its being realistic when you compare the the amount of pvp from other content vrs amount of corruption pvp. The most modern example would be BDO, and AoC has a much more server penalty than that game. IT happens but it wasn't entirely common everyone was pvping everywhere or would stop based on their karma until they had a guild dec going.
Looking at modern examples its going to paint a picture, and factoring in AoC shows the direction it will be going. IT wouldn't be a surprise for most people not to be experiencing pvp with corruption for days potentially or even at all if the content they are doing isnt as competitive. Mainly when people really understand the game and the consequences * the popularity.
I currently would not look at the mobs and take a magnifying glass to them, and use that as the standard. This is something that the question can be raised further in the alpha 2 on mobs and their skills.
I won't be harshly judging the pve content at the start of Alpha 2 either, it be more so giving feed back. One needs to see their plans for things and issues so i can understand where their coming from and their goals.
Also longer times are more targeted towards dungeons where you will have a much harder time getting past mobs without them attack you and using their skills on you.
Being realistic would be correlating to how many bounty hunters there can be at any given time. And seeing as there would be 25% military nodes, it'd make sense to maybe balance out potential corruption to half the amount of potential bounty hunts. So roughly 12.5% at any given time so there is a healthy population for bounty hunters to contend with without having corruption be rampant.
I really don't see a huge amount of pvp around corruption because of the consequences. Its not realistic to run around red with chance to drop loot and having tons of people around you where you just auto die from people zerging.
Guess we will see in the coming test, and how niche they plan to make the game with the amount of pvp. I see corruption again and minimal to the pint BH doesn't do much but counter out people who plan to wild out on pvp just cause (which is way below the 1%).
I agree, which is why I believe the severity for early on corruption is going to need tweaked/reduced if bounty hunting is expected to have a sufficient population of corrupted players to hunt
Games aren't split up in to content/not content groups.
Travel is its own thing. It is not content, it is a precursor to content.
This is another situation where you decided to skip several layers of logic, and jump from "walking isn't content" to "5 minutes of walking is too much". That isn't at all what I said - I said wouldn't want to be associated with the statement that walking is content.
If you believe walking is content, then I would ask if you would ever consider playing a game that was "only" walking around. If not, then I don't consider it content at all, and consider your definition of what content is to be absurd.
To me, that is how you define content - the parts of the game that you would consider playing if that is all there was. This is why I don't consider trash mobs to be content, but why I do consider crafting to be content.
You were complaining about my debating methods yesterday, but I could return the argument.
Unlike you, I don't say I didn't say something if I said it. Even if I feel that my words have been distorted, I'm wondering whether they've been distorted on purpose, or whether it's me who's misspoken so that my words can be interpreted that way.
In fact you said that 20 min was too long in response to my suggestion of a return time of between 5 and 20 min depending on the case.
So you deliberately selected the high end of my comments to better support your own. So I'm choosing the low end to answer you. That's called intellectual dishonesty and it makes sterile debates like this one.
Also, you lack the intellectual honesty to interpret what I said, or you don't know that there are figures of speech that require a certain projection in discussion and to read between the lines.
For example, to say that the content is to walk is hyperbolic. In the context of AOC, this means that moving is an important part of the content, even if the content does not lie in the simple act of walking. Here, it means that the content lies in the exploration that encompasses the act of walking.
Intrepid's decision to significantly limit the means of fast Travels confirms that walking wants to be put forward and included as a central element of the content. Hence the phrase “Walk is content”.
This would be a statement if the player had the choice of walking or using another method. But since he has no choice, statement is irrelevant and walking becomes a fact.
“Walking is boring”, that's a statement and implies not liking the content offered.
Another figure of style : to say that someone has no brain means that he's stupid. But he does have a brain, and you mustn't think that the person you're talking to actually thinks it's possible to live without a brain. It's a euphemism called “meiosis”.
Wiki states:
"Corrupt players respawn at random locations in the vicinity of their death, not at regular spawn points.[102] Non-corrupt players always respawn at the closest active respawn point (to their death).[103]"
What I understand is that this location is random and not a predetermined place which some players may camp.
If the game can find and chose a nearby location which is free of mobs and players, then I see no reason to add a sanctuary spell, as the player will not immediately be under attack and can run and hide or can run back to death location hoping nobody retrieved anything from his ashes (e.g. dropped items).
Players who killed the corrupted player might be in a group and still fighting with others.
If the killed red is solo and if didn't dropped any items, maybe is better to run away than trying to recover resources.
Sanctuary makes no sense as the read is supposed to be cleansed by corruption.
Respawn timer makes also no sense because the red wants to know if he lost items or not on death.
If the red loses the corruption (being just a light corruption) then I have no idea where it will spawn. Probably in such cases no items are dropped, might still want to retrieve resources as he dropped more of them and those who killed him might still want to kill him twice. So possibly this death is also in the vicinity.
When a purple dies, it makes no sense to remain purple. It should become green immediately when he respawns at a predetermined location which could have some guards too nearby.
Cool, if you are now using the low end, that means you are talking about a max 5 minute travel time to get back to where you died.
If you are now talking about a cap of 5 minutes as opposed to your original thoughts of up to 20 minutes, here are my thoughts on that
So, cool - my issue with your 5 - 20 minute comment wasn't with the 5 minute end of it, it was with the 20 minute end of it. That is why that is what I argued against. Those arguments were not "deliberately selected" to support my argument as you suggest, rather, my argument was specifically with those comments (ie, my argument was against the top end of your range, so I argued against the top end of your range). Unless I feel I know you well, I will not attempt to interpret your words. The only poster currently on these forums that I will do that with is NiKr - and I will do that by stating how I am interpretting their words so they have the opportunity to correct me.
Rather, I assume the words you use are the words you mean - as is the case for me. If that is not the case, if you post in a way that need interpretation, then I'm not sure what to say other than select your words better.
So, now you are saying walking is not content - much as I originally said.
If what you are now trying to say is that exploration is content (not really an interpretation, you did say that content lies in the exploration), then perhaps, but this is a different statement. However, even if so, that only applies to exploring new or vastly changed areas. In the context of this discussion where we are talking about traveling from a known spawn point to a known location we were previously at, along a known path (if someone is harvesting in an area, they have almost definately been killed there many times before), then this is not exploration, it is walking.
Tell you what, with the next developer QA, how about you ask Steven if he considers walking to be content.
In the same way that your commute to work is not actually work until you get there, your trip to the store is not actually shopping until you get there, or your drive to the theater is not a part of the show, walking in an MMORPG is not content, it is travel, or commuting.
No one is arguing that there will be a lot of walking in Ashes - we are stating that it is not content.
If you assume that you can't read between the lines and understand a basic figure of speech, that's a terrible admission of weakness. I understand better why discussing with you leads to sterile debates, you don't even do it on purpose.
What is a basic figure of speech to you may well not be one to many other posters. That is why I use the words I mean to use, and assume everyone else uses the words they mean to use.