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
This is fine, but the moment a player fights back, their info is presented
To be clear, I don't mind this mechanic.
Blown past falling sands…
if someone is fishing and doesn't want pvp that is too bad, this is not a pve game where you can do all content without any risk of being pvped. Nor is the concept you only attack who flags so it can turn into a game like Nw with 0 Owpvp.
Honestly the only reason or you to suggest people can only pvp if both flag is because you are against owpvp which is the core concept of AoC. When there is guild / node decs you can kill people for free without getting corruption. So this idea of being left alone if you dont want to pvp doesn't really exist in AoC unless you go super out of your way to avoid pvp.
Corruption is not the main pvp in AoC, and that like all systems in games RULES need to be set to guide things correctly and the intent of players needing to be meaningful rather then finding ways around to avoid consequences.
These systems are not new they have existed in games before L2, BDO most noticeably that have karma systems. There is tons of data on those games already for player interaction and issues to get around corruption. The most easy way is to get mobs to kill a player, this is akin to asking why roads would be bad with 0 street lights or stop signs.
White players: HP bar invisible
Purple players: HP bar visibile
Red players: HP bar visible
Problem solved.
If it stays the way it is now - fine, I don't mind it all. Can't wait to see those threads, full of compaints made by the people who thought it was a good idea to leave it as it is.
That change puts all the emphasis on reducing ganking, the first point I made. But it eliminates the second point, that of raising player skill needed in any pvp engagement if I understand correctly your intent that all players once flagged as combatants have fully visible HP bar.
The way to keep mobs from being trained onto players, is to tweek the tagging mechanics. That's what games actually do to fix that issue, that's what keeps mobs from being trained onto players. I don't know what you mean with the roads analogy.
Your video is funny but training mobs isn't what we are talking about when it comes to hiding HP data. Are we changing topics?
Edit: Well either way. Once this complaint is "fixed" a new complaint will need to "fixed" and on and on. This never will end, nothing done or changed will end people being upset about someone attacking them.
The current segmented hp bars on combatants is a solid middle ground used in other games, mostly RTS games that I've seen (Tyranny off the top of my head, even League to an extent in that you don't get a number, only segments marks). Approximate injury level is enough info to direct focus in a large scale fight, though I'd want to be able to click on another combatant to see more detailed info on hp and stats, but only one at a time.
0 rules makes any game is broken is what the road thing is suppose to be meant for.
If you are training on someone im going to do that wit a rogue so their only target will be them.
Though im not talking about training on someone, im talking about you wait for them to fight mobs and then you attack them leaving them near death for mobs to get final hit. You do that as they are farming and any point they attack mobs you repeat the process. You get 0 corruption, and you have a easy point of information when to stop attacking and allow mobs to kill them without risk to yourself.
You are making up "new complaints" Its like you are ignoring games are out there already that show this issue any and how people have used it, or tried to find ways around it for years perfecting the craft of feeding people to mobs.
The devs have already fixed half the issue by not allowing you to cc a green, its not hard to fix the other half. THere is absolutely no reason for you to try to make a argument you need to see a random green players heath, unless you are intending to be doing exactly this to people.
Why do you need to see a non-combatants HP bar, why are you so concerned about this, why do you want to know when they are almost dead?
If you farm on spot X when I come there as well with 2-3 other players and we start harassing you by keeping you on low HP while you are fighting mobs - you won't be able to do anything about it alone. Therefore, you either leave or try to fight back which is not gonna end up well, because there is simply more of us. Me and other players won't have any risks while doing that.
Apparently, you are not convinced that such situations are likely to happen. I won't be able to prove it to you as you will consider references to L2 with identical PvP/PK system irrelevant for whatever reason, even though they are, and that's the reason why Intrepid made certain changes in it.
And once again, it was happening with invisible HP bars. Visible HP bars make it much easier.
Also, in one of the updates in Lineage 2, they made health bars visible - you can only imagine what was happening there. Mages used DOT spells that reduced player's HP to 1, but not to 0 and that's it.
Why would you ever leave your node without your designated group? It's like the majority of the player base doesn't understand the core concept of Ashes. You will not be effective on your own, folks. Make some friends, and protect each other.
I think those things happen irrespective of HP being visible or not, because it's a community issue more than anything else if that's common behavior.
But past all that back and forth, my prime concern is not enabling bad behavior outside of the intended conflict points, so keeping non-combatant health hidden is consistent with doing that.
If we're not fighting each other and they're not in my group, I don't have a reason to know their HP.
I do see the valid point of not seeing the non combatant hit bar if you are the aggressor. It would make you guess on how many Hit points are left and if you want or do not want corruption. One other factor to be involved in the guesswork by the aggressor is the level difference. The greater the level difference, the more corruption one gains if he is a higher level.
I think your party members (non aggressor party) should be able to see the non combatant hit points however and if they wanted to heal their party member they could. However, I am not sure if healing a party member that is under attack, even if in a non combatant mode would flag the person healing the non aggressor.
It's only been specified that healing a Combatant flags you for combat, so I'd assume healing a Non-Combatant doesn't alter your flag state, since you can cast a heal on anyone whenever you want.
As for sharing corruption, I don't think it should flag anyone but the last-hitter with the Corrupted state, but it should count into the backend tracking of PK score if you assist in a PK so you can't just have a group of PKers slip by with just one dedicated Corruption dump character while the rest have no consequence.
I tend to agree to a certain extent. I'm not sure how the tracking on the backend would work, but I assume it could.
It makes me think of another question: If the attacker is in a party, would it flag the party for attacking a non combatant that ended up dying.
In this case it would be from a mob they where fighting. But it should apply to either actually. Dying from the mob or from the aggressor. So does the whole party get flagged if in group?
Player X hits Player N
Player N stops fighting and intentionally dies
Player X turns red, even though he didn't kill him
Fixing this exploit would require an extra band-aid etc etc. What's the point when there are 2 viable solutions already?
Also, any group punishment might be an issue when it comes to PUG groups. If one person does it for whatever reason, why should others bear responsibility for that?
I can see your point. However, the exploit would only be possible if the player X attacked him at one point. That being said it could be a good deterrent for griefing. If a player attacks another player, even non combatant, he should plan on killing him, not just hitting him continuously trying to provoke him. I think this (the attacking but not killing him) is a byproduct of corruption because of the penalty, and they resort to this. But yes, I can see both sides. I think its worthy of discussion and maybe could iron it out a bit.
Edit: Now if the damage is gone, and the hit points that are taken from the non combatant by the aggressor are healed, then he should not be flagged or corrupted if the mob kills him.
Seems like this game is not for you then
I agree that there is no problem with visible HP bars in a game like WoW or New World. When I played New World, I never ever had a thought about it removing HP bars, because there was no way to exploit it.
In any case, it's good that this topic exists. When people start complaining about it, we'd be able to refer them here, so they could see what other people wrote. I won't get any joy or satisfaction from doing that, but at least I hope that some people will learn.
If player X isn't willing to gain corruption, they should leave player N alone.
If this system gives player N a means to punish player X for bothering them without intention of following through, that is a good thing, not a bad thing.
Player X will soon learn to leave player N alone unless they are serious about getting player N out of the area.
(this is valid only for topics related to what's already implemented in game).
So, when a topic becomes hot, should ring a bell to community managers, and a vote poll should be created in discord where majority is, twitter, but also here in the forum. Then, they can drag the line and see the result from the votes.
If the votes turns out is the same as the system they implemented, well... its clear. If the vote inclines more for the suggestions made by the forum users, then that poll should be forwarded to the actual programmers and team lead to take a look at the topic.
This should happen with every hot topic related to the already implemented mechanics or systems in the game.
Your post might get read, but with a very low chance, and in no way programmers and leads have time to read every single comment in a topic, or to even reply.
Also, community managers don't really have the right to decide who's idea is better to be forwarded to the team.
So best is to see voting polls for hot topics, otherwise what we do now is more for our own entertainment, in the forum, and not for a change or for the rest "up to 1 million players"
Anyway, continue
He knew that L2 wasn't as popular as WoW back in mid 00s. He knew that AA failed despite showing a lot of promise. He liked both of those games, took a ton of inspiration from both and designed Ashes in the way that resembles those 2 games.
Players from all the other mmos will dislike a ton of design decisions in Ashes, so if Steven simply followed the popular opinion - Ashes would not longer be Ashes. And some of us don't want that to happen, which is why we keep yelling "Steven, we believe in your vision and we're still here".
Completely agree, polls are of very limited value.
Maybe you right, but i feel like that there is no attention from up there, to show a sign that posts like your or others are read by the team. If there was at least an icon sign next to the post "this topic has been read by the team", would somehow give your ideas and the time you put in your posts some admiration.
Also the way you put it "Steven, we believe in your vision and we're still here", feels like everything is decided and feedback and ideas are a waste of time.
It is simply unreasonable to expect fundamental design philosophies to change based on the voices from the forums. That doesn't mean that feedback is not important. However, the idea is to enrich the path already taken, not to ask for a different direction.