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
you know, that would be great. I wouldn't on the official discord however as you will just get cat memes for answers LOL.
My post took me almost 3 damn hours to write
ya, discord has voice chat. would be cool if they had a discord plugin for voice on the forums. A separate voice discussion room for each thread. But I can't imagine how to moderate it or even be able to handle some of the conversations haha
The majority of it I'm convinced, not a segment. The pvp players at your "taste" are a minority. Steven himselfs knows this and stated this already. It's quoted in the wiki also at the player types section. I've already linked that.
I punish them by law, I control my life and if they are doing something wrong, they get the consequence. The game is not allowing me to make my own choice for this particular topic and I still don't want to hear form other players that they like harassing others and to victim blaming instead on working on their attidute and behaviour. This is the corrent way of doing it. I've to do nothing on my side, really.
Avoidance: That is excaclty what I want. I want to avoid that this trolls are attacking me. And the game is not providing my a possiblity for that, but for the trolls attacking me. And therefore your proposal is fully right, and I'm in the same opinion, but the game lacks of implementing it. If you were not in a position to attack me at a time that I dont want you to do so, we would not have this entire discussion.
And as I cannot avoid it, I'm searching and fighting for more punishment for those players that did the action, the attack, the kill. Again, in pvp situations where this is intented (sieges, caravans, ...) everything is perfectly fine.
Just showed you my "balance sheet" and why I'm watching this game and why I'm talking to guys like you, fighting for L2 and whatsoever in the cave of the lions. Do you REALLY think I'm the only one disliking that? Well, my young friend, I'm just the only one investing time to explain to you guys why it's not a good design although you think it is. But as you already admitted that you like to attack harmless other players all confirmation is given. You just heared about a small amount of players explaining that to you in the last years. There will be countless players coming soon and at release and they will share this opinion. And that's because some minor segment of harassing-pvp players like it and the majority of mature-pvp players dont.
As for collab streams. I'm definitely not against them, but I dunno if all of our sleep schedules would match for them. And while I do have electricity 24/7 now, I dunno about later and definitely dunno about Flanker's situation with it.
But, I would go to this place then. And I would do everything possible not to get wet. The world provides me with choices for that, so I will use them. I can control it by myself.
This is what the games lacks for this particular "rain". It's not providing something that I can control the avoidance of the "rain". And that's something I dislike and criticize yet, tomorrow and always in the future, because the rain will not stop, but I want to live there, enjoy the landscape, relax in my house with good caribbean rum in the evening. It's only the toxic rain that will decrease this entire satisfaction and happyness. So I will put on thick jackets and warm trousers and I will wait patiently to get better tools to avoid the raind and will wait patiently and hope because perhaps sometimes the rain will stop. And if the weather is sunny and fine, the place starts to be perfect. All is fine, no toxic rain.
we can all talk about that in discord later also. Its all good.
But outside of those time/spaces - it'll always be a chance of rain. Sometimes a near-100% chance as well. And it WILL stop you from going to the park or eating at an open door caffee.
As Flanker said, you're afraid of an occurrence that has singular digits of %s to happen, but you want to change the entire game's design just to remove those <10%. Even though these few % can still be avoided by several in-game means.
If you're going to a place that has daily rains (i.e. Ashes with owpvp) - expect to get wet from time to time (i.e. get attacked in pvp in the open world).
I don't want to change somethings - how even should that be possible.
I dislike the design and that other toxic players get control over other players by harassing, disturbing, attacking or killing them. Rinse and repeat.
I'm convinced it will happen more often. Why? Because it's allowed and can be abused. Players always find ways to abuse it - unless it's not possible from an implementation point of view.
Why are you attacking other green players?
Because you can do it. The question is: Whats the attitude and the behavior behind it to attack a harmless/green player. Why not attacking pvp/combatant players instead? Fear a fair fight?
There is no punishment for attacking greens, just for kills. That's not enough yet. Work has to be done here.
Much harder punishments perhaps will lead to the situation, where non-combatant and other non-combatant (or combatant) players are playing in the same area (-> massive multiplayer game), but still dont fight each other. The goal is to safe the non-combatant getting wet by all means, although the better way would be that there is no rain. And that's why your example limps: Implementation in a video game can avoid this virtual, toxic rain with rules not allowing toxic rainy actions.
Are we going back to ignoring that L2 stopped people from dropping items fairly early in and seemingly never had them drop as much as Ashes does?
I feel like this needs to be factored.
I didn't choose to be a part of it and it happened without my consent, obviously. Yet, I am not complaining even though I can literally die at any moment. Sometimes such unfortunate things happen, whether we want it or not. Complaining never helps, but overcoming and adapting always does. Life isn't fair, but fuck it, it's possible to get over anything. Especially, if it is... just... a videogame. Nope, I never admitted that - you are twisting my words attemting to prove your point; and I don't even recall myself doing that in Lineage 2. Nobody out of those I was competing with in Lineage 2 ever complained or accused me in griefing. Neither did I. Because we perfectly understood the difference between competition for valuable limited resources and actual griefing. It's interesting how in previous messages you emotionally describe that there will PKers and griefers everywhere and now it became "a minor segment" xDDD
And I'll definitely admit I was wrong if that feature will highly increase PKing in Ashes. Right now I don't believe it will, cause I doubt people will risk going Red just over some mats, but we'll have to see.
You solution is quite weak (I think, as mentioned). Do you talk about the hp bars now? I provided reasons why this is not enough or good (several postings above).
Same here. I already displayed my "balance sheet". More Yes than No's.
I'm very sorry to hear that. I'm not in such a terrible situation and wish you all the best.
It's neither your fault, nor my fault. My situation is different, got several things in life due to hard work and abandonment, and reap the fruit of these efforts already nowadays (stilll working a lot). They only major thing I lack is time. Therefore the major criticism I have appeals for situation if somewhere (but not me) is wasting my time. And for me 15min are of high value. I'm not playing a video game for 10h a day, but perhaps 1-3h, or every second day, maybe bit on the weekend (here time is much better, as you can see because I'm in front of my computer, playing games and writing in the Ashes forum). So, if you can understand this situation you will tolerate, that stealing 1h from a 10h player is not as bad as stealing 30min from a 3h player.
Loggin in on Thursday eveneing and getting harassed not only by one, but 20 guys, will decrease my playing time from 2h ours to 20min. That's a waste of time for me, so it's an issue caused from system design as the game attracs time-casuals like me do do their stuff (and I'm allowed to do it as non-combatant, that's not forbidden). Sure, I can fight back. But this evening I've another goal, and that's not doing pointless skirmishes. On the weekends, I will do caravans, sieges and whatsoever. I will run around as combatant because I'm online 4-5 hours, maybe, so let's do fair fights. That's ok. But you see: My choice. That's good design. The game provides diversity and choice. In some points Ashes lacks this, and thus these designs are just terribly bad for me.
You can call it "competition for valuable limited resources" if you like, but you are again confirming that you will attack green harmless players if it is your decision to do so. You already confirmed it, guess you cant recall it now. I already provided the definition of griefing, I won't do it again. I'm talking about the situations of griefing and provided one exmaple with fishing, but there are several other examles as already mentioned.
Artificial (?) example: Jason, non-combatant, is mining ore veins. In a particular area there are 3-4 random locations/spawn points. Kevin (you remember, the sneaky rogue with issues on his space key, jumping all around) is running around in stealth watchin Jason. Kevin is combatant, he played pvp even before.
You are Kevin. What are you doing? Jason still runs around harmless and trying to get some ore to craft some stuff for himself (reward).
No, I've said there will be pvper/combatants everywhere and thats why YOU dont have to fear that you cannot play pvp in an open world, because this is what you want and not harassing greens/non-combatants. This is a huge difference, you can read it again if you like.
PKs and griefers should not get a ruleset that allows them to grief and harass other players. But that's exaclty what's implemented in Ashes and it is called "non combatants can be attacked and killed". Not one, not two not thousands of griefers.
You always try to say "will not happen often". I dont believe that with current ruleset and design.
Going back to Jason, right. Kevin is corrupted. Jason is dead. Kevin gets in stealth mode (still visible on the map), escapes with some ability for that and logs out after 5min. Jason is alive again. Some minutes loss of time. Now, suddently, Donald is apparing. He is a ranger with camouflage (and also got some problem with his space key) and doing the same thing. Jason is dead again. Ranger escapes. Bounty Hunters are brave, but too late. Donald logs out. Maybe Kevin is Donald? We dont know. Jason lost time, again. No reward, only risk. Now, sister of Donald is coming. Jacqueline. Guess what? You are right. Jason is dead. This corruption system is fully irrelevant from Jasons point of view. He dies several times, provides "fun" to three other players and lost his entire evening playing is loved MMO.
This design is nonsense and bad. It is what it is.
Believe me, we will be at the same 2 points for the next decades
- First problem is in front of the screen (toxic attidude and behavior attacking harmless players)
- Second problem is a "design" that allows this toxic behavior the be done (non-combatants can be attacked and killed).
Both problems can be solved from a developer easily. I provided the proposals for that + that the open pvp world will not be harmed because of this but the overall game health and community will prosper.
But no matter how you look back at it, it's absolutely not the same game.
All the incentives are different, all the underlying pushes are different. I will join the crowd of people saying that using L2 as an example of why a similar Corruption system works is not sufficient.
L2 crafting was also not very detailed, nor were pipelines required for much, and the economy even had two different 'auto-requiring' levers.
Continuing to claim that L2 systems work in preference to ArcheAge systems makes no sense. ArcheAge is the closer game because of the economy.
I will absolutely turn this into a true discussion of cost metrics if necessary. Do you have incentive to 'load up a Caravan by a particular time' in L2? No. Do you have a benefit in delaying an opponent group from finishing a task in time before you know they log off because they want to fill up their caravan? No.
In this conversation, the L2 vets are the ones at the experiential disadvantage. If y'all want people to listen to you when things are L2-adjacent and your experience counts, you need to do the same. Or not, and get the 'Lineage2 brainrot' response.
Thinking outside the (L2) box is crucial but unfortunately not wanted from some very active users here.
But I dont' want to post and link again, which playerstyles intrepid and Ahses NEEDS and wants that all the PvX-systems work together smoothly.
Ashes doesn't encourage random PKing. It encourages conflict over contested resources.
Otherwise corruption wouldn't exist to disincentivise griefing.
How punishing would the bountyhunter system have to be for corrupted players, before you'd accept it as a sufficient deterrence against harassment?
There is no value.
The two are not related.
As a person who plays one game like this, has played another, and helps with one.
The two things are absolutely not related. In games that work the way Ashes implies that it will work, every time a certain type of person PKs, they absolutely expect to be hunted down and die, and they are doing it anyway with the intent to benefit their group/guild.
Since Ashes does contain incentives through which a person can benefit their group/guild by killing random solo players, this will happen. We could remove 'incentives for killing solo players' through a redesign of some stuff, but no one wants that.
So, focusing on just that point, I say just dismiss it. The Bounty Hunter system does not contribute to this. If anything, the sort of 'perma-red' who harasses or PKs for fun, is trying to attract bounty hunters.
Economic part would come in the form of soulshots and loading up crafters with mats for crafting them during the encounter itself. While quest-based activities were a simple "do this quest to get a key that will let you inside the boss room".
Considering that those bosses would require a few hundred people (especially when you account for potential pvp), the economic side would need to be done at scale. Depending on how deep into a server's life this was taking place, the ease of that prep would also vary.
The quest activity was the same for everyone, so pvping enemies doing this quest would directly impact their ability to even attempt the boss, which usually led to lookout alts being placed at the locations/npcs where the quest would take you.
I've experienced several situations where bosses couldn't be killed due to a poor eco prep and I've been on both sides of "not enough people managed to do the quest before the boss respawned so we lost this farm to the enemy".
I would imagine that PKing might go up in numbers if gatherable mats get to a super high value due to some event or boss or whatever, but then this becomes kind of a separate discussion.
If the value of mats is high enough - pure PKing would be more viable, cause the risk would match the reward. Yes, I'm sure that there'll be some people that will still try to get the mat carrier killed by mobs instead (let's assume here that training mobs is not an option), but I'd imagine that there'd be more groups like yours where they wouldn't care as much about the corruption, while they will definitely care about the loot.
But in that kind of situation, there's no griefing. There's only directly intended usage of the system. I know Chaliux will not agree with this statement, but that's a whole separate thing.
Do you believe that the abuse we're discussing will go up in noticeable-enough quantity to differentiate AoC's experience from L2's to the point where our experience is not enough to viably compare the two? I'm not rulling out the possibility, but I'm not sure if that possibility is all that high.
And considering that it seem that AA's player-driven deaths only led to trade pack drops (which in Ashes would probably be mule runs?) - I'd imagine those would be separated from any mob location, so the abuse being discussed wouldn't even apply to them.
Why go red when you can get them killed by mobs lmao.
I think Chaliux still has to respond to the question themselves, because the two of you are arriving at this conclusion from very different sides.
The question doesn't address your point, but it certainly challenges theirs.
That's just it though.
You imagine.
Whereas people are telling you 'no that doesn't work like that'. Isn't that a huge problem in your mind? Isn't it the same? People imagine that this game will be unpleasant because of L2 stuff and you say 'no that's not how it works you just have to trust us'.
Why aren't you doing the same for the other side?
It literally comes down to the fact that you are the one who has not, afaik, played the games that work like this, and nearly everyone that has played them tells you that your viewpoint is wrong. If you ever expect others to listen and not just 'stick with whatever they imagine will happen due to L2's system', then do the same.
It's also PKing if two combatants are fighting each other.
We, at least me, talk about the major difference of being a non-combatant at this time of getting attacked.
It's not only in this situation (resource gathering) happening. I already provided several examples and situations how that consequene (corruption) can be avoided or escaped from the toxic attacker.
Resources spawn randomly in different locations.
What's your concern here?
You dislike the situation that a player is gathering ressources because you want to gather this resource? That's your personal issue? Find another spot? Share the spot with him (= win-win situation which gathers more ressources and less fighting/death). Corruption is only available as "solution" because non-combatants can be attacked and killed. So, don't attack them and dont kill them. But, gather ressources. That's was the goal until reaching the ore vein, the flower on the hill, the whatever material.
I'm not talking about the follow-up workarounds of corruption or bounthunters that are in place to correct the first wrong decision, but I'm talking about this wrong decision all the time, and that is: Non-combatants can be attacked and killed without their will. The game allows this. But it shouldn't.
Whaaat? We have the same opinion on that?
Fake news. Cant be true.
@Noaani would you equate trade pack runs to caravans or more to mule runs in Ashes?
I trust others' experience in their games and expect them to trust in my experience. I laid out why I don't believe that the abscence of this abuse in AA was dictated purely by visible hp. Noaani hasn't read that response, so I can't make a new judgement on whether I'm wrong or right in that assumption.
All other examples here have mostly been "well, no other games is like L2, so let's just not make Ashes like L2". And while I try to appreciate everyone's opinion on things, I do find it real silly that a design that at least in part is inspired by L2 should get changed purely on the basis that L2 is a dead game and no design in it can even possibly be good.
I've addressed the points of toggle/server-based pvp designs, because I've experienced them on different setups of L2 servers and have dabbled in them in NW (and heard about what they led to in WoW).
I guess another closest mmo experience to what's being discussed (in the context of loot on death that you reminded me of) would be Albion, but I don't remember who on the forums have played a ton of albion. I think Solvryn might have, but I don't wanna drag him into all of this and try explaining to him all the points that would need to be explained in order to get a good response.
So I'm not really sure how better I can address the counterarguments and suggestions brought up in this thread.