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
Yeah - it would be interesting to see if you could organize a small squad for exactly this kind of incursion and escape for a handy profit.
I already have a squad willing to do it haha. But we are going to do it to make sure it doesnt feel like crap. Otherwise coasts may as well also be lawless zones ya know?
I am green. I get attacked by a purple. I heal myself in attempt to avoid death, but do not fight back. Do I flag for healing myself?
Another one:
I am green. I get attacked by a purple. I cc the purple in attempt to escape, but do not do any damage. Do I flag for the cc?
as far as I can tell if you heal greens you do not flag. If you use any form of beneficial or harmful action on a purple player you become flagged as purple.
Scenario 1: No, you don't flag by healing/buffing green players (including yourself), but you will if healing/buffing purples or reds
Scenario 2: Yes, you flag when you use an ability on a purple or another green. As of yet there isn't any stark separation of 'CC ability' and 'damage ability'.
Sure, an opinion based in observable facts. If you're fighting over things that do not matter, the crumbs of resources in common areas that people regularly will not defend to the point of dying green and taking extra penalties, then that is bottom of the barrel. It has the lowest impact of any kind of PvP. Contested valuable spots in open sea or other lawless zones (should land based ones make itto launch), world events with rare drops and irregular spawn rates, or dungeons all open to PvP are what the open world PvP is here for. It's for making an impact on the world, the pointless 1v1 scuffling over crumbs of resources is not meaningful PvP.
If you're too scared to fight back and eat more corruption, too foolish to have planned an escape route, and too haughty to have group mates around, then yes, minimize your losses instead of whining about how unfair it is that you can be attacked.
The only one equating open world meaningful PvP in the open world to ganking is you. If you and your group fight over things that matter, you will rarely ever be dealing with Corruption. If you're lone-wolf killing greens in populated areas, you're an idiot, first off, and secondly, it's exactly the sort of behavior that's trying to be avoided.
Like Lud already said, reds should not be the ones getting to decide how severe their penalties become, which is all your suggestion would do. Use your brain, disengage, and run if you are so stubbornly against having a group to do your open world PvP with.
All of your argument implies the corrupted players have the ability run away from fights. But they cant. Now if you argue that instead of avoiding corruption when defending oneself, a red can CC non-combatants fighting them so they can attempt to CC and disengage instead of committing to the kill, mind you getting away is not guaranteed since the corrupted players could be CCed as well. Thatd be a reasonable argument on your part. But as it currently is, a corrupted player is doomed the second they get spotted by anyone willing to attack them. Their only options as is are to die, or to fight back and fall further into corruption. There is zero option to disengage.
And I am defining PKs by Stevens own definition. The ONLY time you are griefing (in PvP*), is when PKing to negatively affect another players gameplay. YOUR definition of griefing is just a gank in general.
I really want to assume this is exaggeration, but you phrased it so specifically I'm not sure.
There's certainly a meaningful chance that they will be pursued if they attempt to escape, but how can we assume that they can't escape at all? It's not like stealth/movement abilities/various ways of manipulating combat scenarios with mobs all vanish.
While a player doesn't automatically hit other players when using an AoE against mobs, for example, there's a meaningful chance that it goes the other way.
What scenario are you seeing where a Corrupted player has none of their escape tools or strategies available? (I fully accept that, depending on their build, they might have considerably less of them available).
Or is this just 'someone has spotted you and now everyone will hunt you down'?
I would simply point out that because greens are cc immune you are now incapable of using tools your archetype would normally use to get away from someone. Not every archetype will have a speed boost or teleport from what I can see. Now if slows are still applicable it might not be so bad, but I fully expect needing some form of cc to actually get away from people.
The only pvp this will stop is for those weak players who cannot figure out another way of winning an interaction. And this includes the "visible hp problem" that I've brought up in the past. If you don't have enough skill to avoid corruption while removing a competitor from a spot - you neither deserved that spot nor do you deserve to freely fight back anyone who comes to punish you for what you've done.
And here we simply disagree on the balancing of corruption gain.
As I've said in the past, I want the first few PKs to be cleansable within slightly higher amount of time than what the victim would need to return to the same location (given that the location has best possible mobs for the PKer's lvl). The first PK might even be a fair bit shorter, cause this would give the weaker player 2-3 chances to take the spot away from the competitor w/o utterly destroying themselves with corruption.
This way the best course of action for the PKer is to immediately utilize the content that they just secured by removing a competitor.
If there were a ton of other people in the vicinity (and those people are for some reason not preoccupied with their own content), yet the PKer still decided to go through with the kill - that's on the PKer's poor decision making skills, at which point we come back to "a PKer is the weakest player and they deserve what they get".
And even if you do clear your corruption within enough time - the victim could still come back and compete with you through other means, by which they'd win once again, cause you were weak in the first place.
Same as Azherae, I'm not sure why you so staunchly believe this.
Not 100% of Greens will immediately jump on a Red. And even then, you'd still need those Greens to be in the immediate vicinity to even attempt said jump. AND EVEN THEN, depending on your class you'd have tools that let you escape. And you always have mounts that would make it way easier to create immediate distance from the PK spot, if you fear for your life right after the kill.
Imo, this is exactly why Steven even went with the "BHs see PKers on the map" design. Cause he probably experienced the same thing I did in L2. Which is - PKers kept running away a ton of times. Especially in situations where the victim couldn't shout far enough for others to learn about the PKer in a certain spot or if there simply weren't anyone around at all. And with how big AoC's map will be - I'd imagine we'll have quite a few situations where PKers will be in such a deep location that they'll easily clear their corruption before someone comes.
Well, unless what Steven said about the current plan for corruption clearing is truly as scary as I think it is, where clearing corruption even from your first PK will take good 30-50mins, where literally anyone on the map would have enough time to come kill you.
Like the others here have said. If you put yourself in such a bad spot that you won't have an option to book it after a PK, that's entirely your own damn fault for having awful planning.
That definition of 'griefing' is also laughably useless in the terms of this conversation especially. PvP in Ashes will always negatively affect someone else's gameplay. That's the entire point if you want PvP to matter. You steal from someone's caravan, you swipe the boss someone was after, you take their castle, target-kill a rival guild, etc etc.
Forgive my ignorance, but how DOES the flagging system work? Is there a link? I didn’t find one but didn’t search very hard yet. I assumed it would work the same in most pvp games where the aggressor flags, and you don’t suffer for defending oneself?
So you are penalized for defending yourself if you are red? It doesn’t pvp flag the aggressor? That’s….kind of lame. Especially since I see you say the green (I assume the traditional blue) is cc immune? Why would anyone ever be cc immune? That seems like bad design for a pvp focused game imo. I’m brand new here though so I don’t know the details and only going off what you guys are saying.
Now this I can get behind. Safe zones are for chumps.
normal state for a player is non-combatant(green) in this state you are immune to cc and take normal death penalties. Combatant state (purple) is when you attack another purple or green player and reducing your death penalty to half the normal rate. Corrupted (Red) is when you end up delivering the killing blow on a green player. In this state you take 6 times more death penalties, have reduced stats according to how much corruption they have, have a chance of dropping finished gear pieces that are equipped or in your bags, do not respawn at normal respawn locations rather in the wild, cannot trade with players, and are Kill on sight to city guards.
The problem we are wanting to get rid of/reduce is the fact that a green player attacking a red player does not flag them purple, causing them to retain their cc immunity and if the red player fights back and kills them the red player gains more corruption which increases the death penalties and stat dampening they receive while red. This effectively makes it so that if anyone ever goes red, there is a green horde of players hunting that person down. This will reduce the amount of people even trying to pvp in the open world as the risk of dying as a red player is way too high and too difficult to avoid.
I have some news for you:
"there might not be any content that is guaranteed to have no PvP at it"
Source:
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxzVVVzcryVUpXupNHYVTwbf-4wuQlc0rn?si=DEM1z0OcvbjLDlxG
That can happen only if corruption is balanced so that you start feeling the pain after you killed 100 greens or so.
That means if you want your fishing spot, you kill the group which doesn't fight back but they come and they will not fight back 2nd time either and 3rd time either. Eventually they drive the fish away with so much blood in the water and you will be sad. That's griefing.
That will definitely happen
Then the PvP part is how to annoy the others to make them leave.
Especially if they use trackers
You're a few years too late on the 'news' there.
Oh you are so beyond out of scope here it's starting to be less funny, and more sad.
Not 'your' fishing spot. Not griefing to harvest in a harvesting spot. No way someone would be that stupid to rack up 10-15 PKs over some fish that these players clearly don't even care about. And every time they wouldn't attack you while green? Thats odd, given you were convinced and scared stiff that every single green would be hunting you down on sight.
every single green? Great PvP-ers.
You said Red can clean corruption in the deep ocean so killing the green close to the border seems viable.
It would, if that was what you meant, and not the 'those people didn't let me have a gathering spot all to myself so I kill them on repeat each time they come back' that you clearly set up there
Let's see where Steven put's the fishing spots in this PvX game which is unlike any other
Lakes, rivers, ponds, and sea. Only one of which is directly part of lawless territory. But again, it's plainly obvious your imaginary scenario wasn't about the lawless sea at all.
Just this same strange, recurring entitlement mentality to harvesting areas.
Its not about either of our opinions about PKers. You can think PKing is despicable. I can think its just normal PvP. What matters is what corruption is meant to accomplish, and Steven has already told us it is to deter griefing. And as he defines it, PKing isnt griefing. You can certainly grief via PKing, but they are not the same. Its not supposed to stop players from PKing, as you say. It is to stop players from griefing.
To argue that PKing has no place in ashes and should not have a healthy, keyword here is healthy, amount of it, is to argue to remove that entire aspect of risk when seeking rewards in the game. PKers and griefers alike would still be dealing with a substantial amount of risk. This whole argument is pointing out the very real possibility that corruption will have vastly disproportionate risk to any incentive of attacking other players. Objectively, using Stevens definitions, corruption will need to be balanced to mainly deter griefing, as opposed to deter griefing AND PvP, regardless of your or my own opinion of that PvP.
@Caeryl @Azherae This part of the response also goes to yall
The reason there is no option for escape, is because you cant utilize any CC against non-combatants who engage you. You are being very disingenuous if you are saying a corrupted player has a chance to get away from CC immune players while also being able to get CCed themselves. I will give you some benefit of the doubt and say rogues may be able to pull it off, but I am willing to bet 99 times out of 100, any corrupted player trying to avoid conflict and evade hostile players will be guaranteed to die. That being said, I plan to test this. Both in 1v1 and 8v8 scenarios. Corrupted players purely focusing on escape and evasion against multiple planned groups and any unplanned groups they run into. Going to track which classes succeed if any, and how many successfully escape with cleared corruption vs how many attempts it takes. Assuming bounty hunter systems get included at some point, those will be utilized by at least 1 player or group that the corrupted killed.
Because "I can't CC because the enemy is green" is the same as "I can't CC because my CC isn't helpful/I don't have any".
If the game is CC heavy, I agree with you somewhat, because the Green will also be likely to have a lot of it, but this disparity you're discussing gets larger when the game doesn't have much.
I'd hope that at least the 1v1 TTK would offer some options for a player who is trying to escape, to actually do so, regardless of their state.
Do with that what you will, its not exactly a large census
I get what youre saying here and I hope so too. But from experience through many MMOs, I would say its likely going to be the case that if a class has no CCs, the likelihood of escape someone who can CC them is slim to zero.
This is also why I plan to test it though. So hopefully youre correct, but also hopefully not at the cost of gameplay since CCs tend to be important abilities, especially in large scale PvP
Exactly, PKing must exist for the element of risk.
If I have to choose, I would make cleaning the corruption fast at the detriment of Bounty Hunters, who then become useless as they have no time to reach the red.
But even more levels of corruption are planned to be viable. At least theoretically on wiki.
Didn't the Phoenix Initiative players tested such things?