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
I simply disagree with how that should be achieved. You want PKers to never gain more corruption after the first kill, cause everyone who tries to kill them is now flagged vs them, while I want corruption to be cleansable faster, so that the non-griefing PKers (i.e. people with small PK counts) have the chance to remove their corruption just in time before the highest risk of dying with it.
I base this preference on direct experience of this kind of balancing in L2's private servers. Running to a deeper spot in a dungeon would usually take around 1-2min (that is if you're on a mount, with buffs and can ignore all the mobs) and on high rate servers corruption would be going down faster, so even at fairly high PK counts you'd still be able to go back to Green before the victim comes back.
The precise balancing should obviously be figured out through testing, but if mobs are not trivial (i.e. you can't just run past several dozen rooms of them w/o dying) and respawn points are located correctly - the only ones who can get you are the Greens near you (but only if they're not preoccupied with content, which they would be in a dungeon) or BHs that just so happen to be in the vicinity. Though even then, they'd need to be real close, especially if you have a really low PKC.
And this obviously punishes anyone who's PKing outside of the dungeon depths, but imo they deserve to get fucked, cause, to me, anyone outside a dungeon is a casual player who should be protected against potential PKers way more than a player who's farming a dungeon.
But even this could be balanced by looking at how much xp-to-corruption-cleansing a high value gatherable gives. That is, if valuable gatherables exist outside of dungeons of course. Those high value gatherables could also remove the corruption quicker, which would upkeep the risk/reward balance for those who're trying to farm a high value resource.
And I personally believe that you're drastically overestimating the amount of players that, will not only be near to you but, would be willing to hunt you.
The map is ginormous. The only ones who can properly track you are the BHs. And Greens respawn at specific shrines that they're aligned to. So your victim would be who knows where, the nearest BH could be who knows where (that is if there's even enough of them in the game), nearest other Greens might be doing something way more important than trying to hunt a Red that's also who knows where to them, and even if they wanted to - they might be preoccupied with difficult mobs, so they wouldn't be able to just quickly disengage and go hunt you.
And again, I'm speaking from experience on all sides of this situation, but on a way smaller map and with TPs to locations. I've been the PKer who's running away. I've been the Green victim who's trying to come back. I've been a Green char that was nearby and saw in chat a "there's a PK here" message. I've been a guildy that's trying to immediately help a mate by hunting the PKer (usually happens on the 2-3rd PK of the mate, cause L2 players liked to at least try and deal with PKers themselves).
And even on servers where corruption took longer to clear (which were also the ones where PKers would run more often than try to grind it off) - PKers would still get away relatively frequently. Especially if they knew what they were doing (i.e. knew the location well, had a mount, had buffs and/or had help).
So far you seem to be imagining that every damn PKer will be constantly followed by a huge mob of Greens who just chain-CC the PKer and don't ever let him escape. I simply do not see that happening all that often, outside of situatons where the PKer was dumb enough to become a PKer right in the middle of such a mob.
Presence of corruption should be a risk, not a mundanity. This is why I keep saying that it's a last resort for weak players, cause they've failed at every other method of competition against another player.
You can obviously dislike that approach, but that's exactly what this kind of design does and what Steven, seemingly, wants in the game. His addition of "corruption clearing will take even longer than L2's" only proves this even more to me.
Yea that’s dumb. In every pvp game I’ve ever played, regardless of your color/status, if someone attacks you they flag grey(or in this case purple) to you. Being red should be hard, but it shouldn’t be impossible. It is a playstyle, and they should have their own towns/banks, if only a few. I spent most of my time in uo red, and I never griefed, or ganked players that couldn’t fight back. I just lived in bucs den and pvpd all day. Darkfall was similar, but also race based, so as I was an altar, all other races were already red to me. Sort of like built in factions.
In a player economy, pvp driven game, why would you assume clans wouldn’t fight over resources? No I don’t want others getting all those tasty fish, so yes, I’d kill them to send them on their way. I’d at least offer them the chance to tuck their tails first however. Too bad this game isn’t full loot. I miss darkfall.
Lmao. So to deal with the, “corruption system”, which is supposed to prevent griefing, they will grief instead of just killing.
Yup, working as intended. SMH.
A red player is never 'innocent' - they are guilty by virtue of whatever act made them red. There is no 'self defense' clause here.
So yes, they either fight back and gain more corruption, run, or accept that this is the consequence of their actions and let the greens kill them.
this finality will result in no one wanting to pvp in the open world. Everyone will ignore each other to avoid the risk of the perceived inescapable severe punishment that is being red. Obviously there are going to be exceptions, but the majority of interactions will be ignoring anyone that attacks you. This is not good for the game.
This is such a ridiculous question. I do expect people to fight over valuable resources. What I don't expect is for people to lay down and die over valuable resources and lose more just out of spite. Nor do I expect people to go red over crumbs of common mats as if there weren't any other more valuable thing they could be chasing that doesn't involve corruption that has bigger payouts.
Sure some people will, but that's only ever a detriment to them if they refuse to ever go purple.
I also don't expect players with a shred of sense to PK over crumbs within shouting distance of a group of noncombatants. I'm a firm believer in winning stupid prizes for playing stupid games. The cascade effect of corruption is a self-made problem born entirely off bad decision making and a lack of planning in a lone-wolf type player.
It is not a supported or desired playstyle in Ashes, so this won't be the game for you if you can't accept this right off the bat. You won't be able to trade, as that evades the penalties of increased drop rates while corrupt, and you can't bank gear, as it evades the penalties of risking dropped gear while corrupt.
Fight over things that matter, and things that are valuable, as you'll rarely if ever be dealing with corruption.
Corruption based PvP is intended to not be normal intended gameplaly, but for when that one green greifer REALLY has it coming. If a player is attacking me when I'm minding my own business I'm going to insist they kill me to eat every bit of that pill.
This will not 'kill open world pvp'. There are many avenues of PvP that do not involve corruption. It's only the griefbros that want to not suffer the consequences of their choices that keep insisting the penalties be weaker.
I can see both points of view but agree with #2 because I don't believe 1 or 2 kills warrants every combined punishment and potentially losing gear that took a long time to get. Maybe that's actually intended for the start of A2 so that all aspects of the game can be properly tested without chaos breaking out? We shall see. Seems pretty obvious to me Corruption is intended as a range and not a static condition. They've even given examples like how killing a low level player gives higher corruption penalties. I don't think it's far fetched to consider the possibility of lesser penalties at lower levels of corruption like gear degradation, xp debt and increased resource drops. I still believe there should be some punishment for people going through the world killing players aimlessly or for trivial reasons. I just think fighting over resources or farm is a valid reason at times depending on the quantity and quality.
If you go off of Steven's past statements on the subject and think logically about the situation, the intended design IS for people to go corrupt fairly regularly otherwise it wouldn't exist. What about the bounty hunter system? Why waste time developing one system that will "rarely" be used and another completely reliant on it that then becomes pointless too? Another clear indicator to me is dropped resources on death. No point in having it if you're not intending players to be looting each other, and how do you loot them? You kill them or loot them after someone/something else did.
I also hate being punished for simply defending myself whether I'm a green or a red. This would happen to me all the time in Archeage where I was just minding my own business waiting to go into a dungeon or using the Auction House in the middle of the city when some random would start attacking me. Nobody would do shit until I fought back then every unaffiliated bystander would jump in and it would become a moshpit. Guards wouldn't do a thing, nobody was penalized for instigating or turning the city into a battlefield, so guess what happens? It just continues. That's the kinda dumb pointless PvP the game should be trying to prevent, not people fighting over resources out in the wild. For one I should stay non combatant for defending myself and two -Combatants in a city should be instantly attacked by the guards. If you wanna fight others take it to the Arena or outside the city for a duel. The entire map has open PvP, Nodes/Cities should be the one semi-safe place in the game to not worry about that. Also remove the no CC on greens and reduced penalties for combatants. Nobody should be incentivized to attack others via flagging status except against corrupt players, doing so inherently has it's own rewards if you're smart about it.
It's more like this:
1) Killing a green is something that should be done sparingly for objective gains that make the risk worth it in the eyes of the player that's going red, and you should be punished for going red in areas where others can quickly respond. You have options and strategies to avoid the cascade effect.
2) Corrupted players can have full control over how deep their penalties go because 'self-defense'. It doesn't matter when or why a green attacked the red, just that they can be taunted or made to hit first which absolves the Corrupted player of the intended ramping consequences if they don't haul off from society to 'pay penance' by gaining exp for the node.
You have not had someone train mobs on you constantly. Then you will realize that killing a player to contest for a spot is not actually griefing at all.
PKing should be allowed as much as Ashes intends it to be viable to make exploring, gathering, and existing in the open world in general a real risk. 100 out of 10000... 1% chance of risk is radically low.
I simply am arguing for ways to REDUCE punishment for what isnt considered griefing. Griefing is the issue. With my suggesting griefing is STILL punished severely, it just allows for PKs to not be as deterred, because that is not the intent of the system as it has been defined to us. Theres no moral argument here. Its entirely a matter of design.
Should PKs also be completely rampant? No, and they wouldnt be with my suggestion. PKs would be time-gates by the corruption systems design, providing enough space between kills to not be considered griefing.
One of the core issues with your reasoning is your desire to Punish any PKer, rather than a focus on punishing griefers in particular. Your bias is interfering with the actual goal of the system. PKers and Griefers are not one in the same.
As far as "The world is big, it wont happen anyway, you're not going to have it happen everytime you do it" This is lazy and probably the worst philosophy to have in game development or any type of project really. If theres something that can be determined as bad design, and you ignore it simply because you think "it wont happen much", those things will add up, and the project will be garbage.
If you think the game will be better for any of this, you're seriously coping.
Exactly. And its not even about letting these people go on killing sprees, its literally about not guaranteeing their doom after a legitimate, non-griefing PK.
Yea, so not L2 right?
So far its the general consensus with PvPers I ask about the system. Make it too punishing, and it will never happen
Griefing* isnt intended to be normal gameplay. PKing isnt griefing.
Open World PvP isnt Events.
1).Punish any Players killing PVEers in the open world who dont fight back regardless of if that PVEer may be deserving!
2). griefing should be the focus of corruption punishment, not PKing.
Any system that penalizes you for defending yourself is silly, regardless of the reason you are attacked.
If my clan owns an area and you are farming it, you’re dead. Want to farm it, join up if we allow it. Hence, many people will be red, unless this is all lawless zones which makes it all rather moot. Not counting mass pvp aoes, and people jumping in them to grief you red. People go red all the time in pvp mmos without being “an evil guy”
No one said I’d be pking noobs for crumbs bud. People go red in mmo pvp all the time. It’s inescapable, unless you don’t actually pvp, or every zone is lawless.
Also idk who you think you are, that you think you’re the arbiter of what game is for me, or not for me, but I will now pk you on sight if your ig name is the same. I’ll have one account dedicated red for the life of the game. Bet me.
I don’t care what the penalties are for being red. I don’t care if they are very severe. Even skill/stat loss on death id be ok with. It’s supposed to be a tough lifestyle. However sometimes people go red due to open world pvp , and territorial conflict, and yes even griefers.
A red player, any player really, should not be penalized for defending himself, if ANY other player flags him with damage. Period.
Spare us both the dramatics. You sound like a ten year old.
Going red is obvious going to happen every now and then. I'm sure I'll pop up red at some point or other, but the cascade effect isn't a big scary 'I just won't PvP then'-worthy threat unless you make stupid choices and refuse to operate within a group.
One red on their own is a loot piñata. A group with a red is a threat.
In Ashes, red is a punishment. Period.
Our goal is the same - more meaningful PKing in the game. Our means of getting to that goal are different. You want people to never gain more corruption once they're Red, while I want people to completely remove corruption before they can risk the high penalties.
And in both cases, the more PKC you have - the higher the risk of you dying.
We'll just have to see how the gameplay turns out. I'm simply saying that even in a smaller game with less stuff to do PKers could run away, so I don't see how Ashes will magically have hordes of Greens hunting Reds.
Yes, I believe that creating less backwards progression for Green players would be good for the game. Anyone competitive would just fight back and, as I keep saying, anyone with low PKC should be able to remove their corruption fast enough for the victim to know that "if I die here now, there's a fairly high chance that I lose twice as many of my precious mats".
It sure isn't. But there's system overlap, just as there's overlap with AA or some other games. And it just so happens that in this particular case AoC's system is different from other games, but similar to L2.
If Steven decides to suddenly change the system to allow for way more Reds - I won't be worse for it, cause I'm already used to L2 servers where PKing was barely ever punished. But I'm gonna be reaaaaal curious to see how many people will be fine with dying left and right, while also suffering higher penalties.
You want fair and balanced pvp without your permanent red twink: PvP against players that want / consent to pvp with you at that particular point of time or situation.
Some guy is fishing as green/non-combatant and you show up and want to grab that („your“) lake and fish because of your competitive behavior? Thats fine. Kill him, but face the consequences. Its your decision. The decision of the guy gathering materials for cooking just has another individual goal in this playing session, thats probably why he isnt purple already. In the next session one day later he potentially will fight within a caravan pvp skirmish, its up to him, right?
And thats why we all will provide a lot of feedback to intrepid according to the bounty hunter system, which also, not only, is designed for player behavior like yours.
Again: Face the consequences of your actions, be mature.
“I just won’t pvp in a game that is centered around pvp” so what will you do while you are red? Nothing? Because anything you do WILL lead to pvp. Have you ever played a pvx mmo? No where is safe. Also I’m 45, nice try though. Hopefully your ig name will be the same. See you soon.