Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
And any other way of competition is even more skillful, if your goal is to completely overwhelm the opponent.
If a player simply stops gathering due to another player beating them to the node over and over I don't see a difference. If you refuse to be competition, that shouldnt exclude you from the risk, at least if you are the same/similar level. Just because a player refuses to fight doesn't make the player attacking them unskillful or a "weak" player as you consider them. They're simply advancing themselves within the game by removing competitors. The only time it becomes griefing is when you could consider it actively trying to ruin that players gaming experience. Only way you could really track that though is number of kills in a short amount of time. So the balance is only being able to PK periodically without severe punishment (but still some punishment to discourage gratuitous PKing) and severely punishing the player after a sufficient threshold is reached through actively killing players who dont fight back.
Which brings us to a question that I don't think have been brought up in this part of the convo
You equate pve-based actions to PKing, because they achieve the same goal.
What, in your opinion, would be "griefing actions" in pve? As in, when would you try pinging a GM to complain about griefing? And how would you explain to them the method of griefing? If your competitor was just outfarming you - is that griefing? If he was training mobs onto you every time you came back to the same location - is that griefing?
And how should Intrepid track that kind of griefing then?
Because, as I see it, Steven's language kinda implies that PKing CAN be griefing, but that's a directly trackable griefing (which even you point out in this message), while every other action would be near-impossible to properly track, if you tried telling a GM that you're being griefed.
And would this not, then, be the main difference between the two approaches to competition? One is seen as a direct tool for griefing, while others haven't been even talked about in this context (unless I missed it). Hell, I'll even try getting Fantm to ask this on stream rn.
Those thing are never griefing lmfao. If you resort to PK over a it's because in every other aspect of completion you were worse and less skilled than the other player.
All this chatter you posted about intent and goals while apparently still not understanding that neither of those are quantifiable. There is no difference between a PK for gain and a PK to grief, they're all treated the same, and when PK is the only scenario in which that competitor takes significant direct harm onto themselves, yeah obviously you should hit the attacker with corruption.
Corruption is not a PvP killer like you claim if you use your brain when going red. All these doom scenarios around the solo PKer is pointless and less than relevant in an objective based group-PvX game. I could not care less about how solo players feel about open world combat. Operating in a group and fighting as a group makes most of the consequences ignorable. If you fight over valuables with someone that hasn't already been shown that you aren't capable of winning in a direct harvesting completion, they'll be purple anyway because it's objectively worse to die green than die purple.
When the entire game tells you at all times to 'go purple, go purple, it's better to be purple, you'll have penalties for dying, you'll have worse penalties for dying without fighting back', then yeah obviously i don't expect PKers to be common, because I don't expect dying green to be common.
Less than a week left now. Honestly this whole conversation rings more and more pointless given that we can be sure it's not gonna change lmao. I'll let the weak PKers whine in peace and just keep looking forward to the Alpha 2 queue launches
Thats the main issue really, you cant (or at least nobody has so far) measure PVE griefing. All you can do is report it and hope a GM catches them and punished them accordingly. Otherwise the only way to deal with them is to PK them. Which is why I argue that a few PKs within reason should be leniently punished, not severely, nor should those cause compounding corruption(edit* for defending yourself). Those are how you can counter that sort of behavior without having to rely on GMs.
And the way I would define PvE griefing is the same as PvP griefing. Repetitive, harassing actions meant to negatively impact a players gameplay experience. A couple mob trains to make a point isnt necessarily a bad thing. But if you train mobs on someone for 30 minutes to an hours, thatd be griefing.
your bias is showing
Yeah, the bias of playing skillfully over whining for less consequences?
Oh yes, it's my bias that's a problem when you're of the misguided opinion that someone farming a location more efficiently to deny you resources is something they should be punished for.
No GM is going to take you seriously if you report someone for harvesting better than you. Why the hell would they ever punish them? Should I report the guild lead who declared war on my guild and started attacking all our caravans and ships and castle? Obviously not, even though all those have a much more significant negative impact on the game experience of many more players than one person mad about this other player farming 'their' spot and harvesting 'their' mats without punishment.
I get it dude. PVEers cant grief. You hate PvP. All PKers bad. Move along.
Learn to read, it'll do you some good.
Meanwhile I'll be enjoy PvP and fighting in Ashes while you stay afraid of it for no reason. See you lot in a week, servers allowing.
Feel free to engage first.
And I highly doubt that Steven will see "training mobs onto someone to farm a spot" as griefing (even repetitively), because that's just one of the tools players can use. Hell, I'd imagine that even repetitive PKing won't be considered griefing, as long as you stay in the same spot and do the content you were PKing people to do. It's just that the corruption system itself will punish you way harder than a GM would.
This is why I'm saying that Intrepid need to add tools to address this kind of pve manipulation, just as "corruption" is a tool to address pvp manipulation.
As I have already said, you would still need to take time to work off the PKs before it would accumulate to genuine griefing potential. This is your failsafe against PK griefing since it forces players to take a break from utilizing PKs that are justifiable. Just as you cant measure PVE griefing, you cant discern a large number of justifiable PKs in a short amount of time from Griefing. But more often than not, excessive PKs would likely be the result of griefing. Its a trade off.
I would be all for tracking PKs per player if possible, which would make it easier to discern if a player is being camped. As opposed to PKing several different players. I would give less corruption for PKing 5 players 1 time each in 20 minutes vs if you are on your 5th PK on the same player in 20 minutes.
All of that aside, one thing that is for certain is in no way shape or form can defending yourself be considered griefing in any way. Which is why it shouldnt grant more corruption. PKs against players who dont fight back should be the only factor in adding more corruption.
https://tiktok.com/@kotf_owo/video/7121513057414729006?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc
Honestly if a game has open world pvp you do not have the right to walk around pretending it doesnt exist. When you made your character you should have understood you were at threat of being attacked at any point. So thats the point of contact where you consented to this kind of pvp.
Punishments and deterring griefing is a good thing. I do not believe the current system deters griefing, it deters any open world pvp period. I just got done watching Fantmx's stream with Steven hearing they increased the downsides of going corrupt and this sounds like it might snowball into something so intolerable. The people in alpha 2 could not give less a crap about losing gear as a red. So I hope this is only a temporary fix and not something that causes open world conflict to be extinct on launch.
This is why I keep saying that PKing will never be the way to compete for a spot. And this is also why I agree that all the other methods of competition are in no way griefing, cause you'll have to use them if you can't just completely outfarm a person. And out of all of those - PKing is the very last thing you should even attempt.
And I agree with all of that. None of that changes that fact that killing a completely passive target (which might even have mobs on it) is the lowest-damn-skilled action possible. It requires no skill. It requires no gear. It requires no thought. You simply toggle on auto-attack and sit on your ass, while your char PKs someone.
I cant agree with it requiring no skill and no gear assuming we are talking about solo vs solo or group vs group. Just because someone is not attacking back does not mean they cant out heal or outrun you. I will say that I can agree if its ganking. the rare exception would be if you see them at low health bracket and then go in. that's the brainless type of killing. And to be honest, I'm completely opposed to them adding the tiers to health. the original intent is better served if we cannot see the targets health range at all.
If they're busy outhealing either your dmg or the dmg from you and mobs - they're not farming stuff, which means you can do it, which also accomplishes the goal w/o PKing.
I'm mostly talking about situations where you've hit a person once to let them know you want them to leave and you're ready to fight for it. But the person does nothing in return and just keeps doing whatever they were doing before. And if you decide to keep hitting them - you'll just be hitting them until they die.
And yes, I dunno what kind of gear you'd need, but if we're talking about spot contestation, and not just an alt or a bum griefing people - your gear would be on the same lvl as your target, so you wouldn't need to do much more than autoattack.
And again, everything that I'm saying here is from direct experience. I've had a ton of PKs where I just put my char on autoattack of a player until I PKed them. Nothing else needed to be done.
Thats already an issue, with the current system or with what I am suggesting, youre going to have to work off corruption regardless. Its extremely punishing. Hence why I have been arguing that giving even more corruption for kills that cant qualify as griefing is stupid.
Is this a system for punishing "unskilled" players? No its a system to deter griefing. A player refusing to fight in a game designed for players to fight eachother isnt meant to be catered to, nor is the player who kills them without outright griefing them meant to be sentenced to a practically guaranteed doom.
Theres already several games like that for you to choose from. No need for another.
In a world where the developers are god and can create whatever system they want, its silly to say we cannot make this work. It can work. Many people have liked different versions of it, we are just trying to determine the best version of it. So make no mistake I dont think anyone arguing here wants to remove the system we just have different ideas on how it should perform.
that's not a better pvp system.
I can say with complete and utter certainty that Ashes is not the game for you.
'Let me turn off PvP in the PvX game' how about no. Play a different game if you don't want to engage in PvP. This one was made for people who enjoy it.