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 have no problem with consequences. I also have no problem deleting a char and starting over if he gets “too red”. It’s still a stupid concept to be penalized for defending oneself. I’m an old school mmo player. I can grind no problem. Had several maxed chars on darkfall, and if you only knew how long THAT took, you’d think the time to level in this game was a farce. It seems to me all the responses in favor for this, aren’t pvpers, and they think this will save them. It won’t. You won’t be able to do any pve content safely ever. Not without a giant clan guarding you 24/7 (and you’ll still have pvp, but you might survive in that case). All of you talk like this is pve game. Good luck.
That’s consequences. Not nerfing their combat abilities if they get attacked.
You miss the "you attacked / killed before" part here. No victim blaming. The causal chain is quite trivial, and it starts at your kill against a green / non-combatant. Up from that decision (which is yours) you perhaps take some consequences - in Ashes that system is called corruption.
Your are mixing up to topics here.
- One topic is: You obviously have all the time of the world (for whatever reason I really don't care) - so as 20 years ago, and nowadays, you can level, grind an play - time seems to have little "value" for you. So this topic and aspect is around "frequent player", meaning: no (time) casual player. We got that, I guess.
- The second message is: PvP Players. This potentially has nothing to do with the first topic. I'm also an old school MMO player, starting (first steps) in DAoC (2002 -> EU) and getting really deep into MMO since WoW. Played there on (permanent) pvp servers as well as on pve servers. Leveleld slowley (and on pvp servers without compassion from other players and no ingame systems saving you) and played thousands of hours in owpvp and instanced pvp (like battlegrounds, arena). Played PvE and PvP, did the same in GW2 (especially sPvP, so structured PvP), ESO, several other MMOs in between and recently New World. In WoW wording my highes pvp achievemnts were gladiator in Arena and high ranged in rated battle grounds (so larger scaled pvp maps with addtional map goald, not "only" deathmath like in arena). Did that with two characters in parallel. So, well no, you are wrong, you are not talking to a "PvE" player (I also pve'd a lot, so played all the 40main molten core raids until the fall of Arthas and hundrets of dungeons and raids), but a player, which has played several MMOs with several different aspects and contents with both PvE and PvP aspects of the game - and also both contents combined. And, talking about time: You can do 3 hours Arena in WoW at high rank if you are experienced and skilled enough. I'm not today, I was in the past. So, that's why it is important to distinguish between both points.
And this is where my experience and behavior about pvp all comes from: If you want to play serious and high quality pvp, then you do it in a consent way under same, nearly equal conditions. I'm just laughing about "pvp players" that attack other players that are not fighting back, or are at low health, or are just doing something completely different in that particular situation, because in my experience and age that's coward pvp, nothing more. For you, your thinking and behavior as a "real" pvp player, it just like: You pvp everyone always and forever up to your personal will and mood. Well, you can think and behvave like this, but you will face the consquences for your actions in this game, so I'm not sure whom to wih "good luck" here, but I'm convinced it's not us or me. I'm getting used to the corruption systems, but in a completely different way than you, because I dislike - nowadays - the concept, that players can be attacked, although they dont consent to pvp at this time. But, by contrast, I love the idea of object-based pvp skirmishes, because that's pvp under same willingness of all involved players/groups. But, running around harassing/attacking/killing green players and then whining about the consequences is something I couldn't care less and that's why I start to like the corruption systems and I really hope that the huge market of MMO players out there will provide equal feedback during test phases and therefore corruption will work as intented to ensure that there still IS the possiblity to kill non-combatants/greens (for players like you) BUT also there will be a consequence (for players like you) because of that action. You want a permanent pvp server (and I really really know what that means, believe me) -> lawless zones are your sandbox, you can play with all your big excavators there. If other players are in this zone, your "behavior" and "perspective" of a real "pvp player" is 100% correct. In other regions it's no heroic pvp if you run around alone or in your 40 man raid (maybe overgeared because time has no value, so "more gear = more skill", .. right...) and harass and kill other green players running around (doing ther PvE sandpark-stuff in that PvX game) and just thinking all the time about how to save all the reds in your group that get fun out of that zerg or grasshopper pvp. So, for the rest: Well, Good luck, my red friend, because in Ashes it is meant differently as on "permanent pvp servers" or "all over lawless zones". This "stupid concepts" are not valid there, that's why the are not used in such pvp-server-games or at naval zones in Ashes - by intention. In all other regions - by intention - intrepid wants you to get punished, because Steven knows (which is the difference in experience to you) that he needs this pve or pvx players that his game designs work and thus he needs mechanics to keep their entertainment higher then their frustration just because of players like you, with thousands hours of time, just do decrease entertainment and fun gameplay of ohter players.
"PKers should be able to not even be a PKer before their victim reaches them"
Not sure what you're even saying here. Are you saying PKers suddenly stop becoming PKers before the person they are killing comes to them? No idea what this means.
Where did I say people shouldn't ever gain more corruption once they're red? Players should absolutely gain more corruption for killing players who don't fight back. I have only ever argued that when players are actively fighting eachother, it makes no sense to punish PvP that wouldn't be defined as potentially griefing. You're not griefing a green player who is attacking you by defending yourself against them.
The difference between us is you want all encompassing severe punishment, regardless of if it's griefing or not when PKing. I am advocating for focusing griefing specifically(the entire point of the system), which in turn regulates PKing, while not damning players for doing so while not actually griefing.
You can just as easily.apply your logic to "there isn't just magically going to be hordes of PKers" so I don't see your point. You plan accordingly so things don't turn to garbage
I was referring to the things that PvP players will do Alternatively to just a simple PK, which would equate to far worse gameplay to avoid a too high risk system.
If i use your logic of, players won't be around eachother enough to make PKing a common occurence, what would you say?
And besides, im not advocating for rampant PKing, only to not make the risks of corruption so high that it prevents it from ever happening except on the rarest of occasions, and pushing players to take even worse routes to achieve the same goal.
Honestly, that's even more embarrassing for you, especially because on top of the limp threats, you apparently still don't know how to read.
Oh well, keep raging at nothing.
I could literally play this game JUST like that if I wanted.
You missed the part where people go red from group/world pvp ALL THE TIME and it has nothing to do with them purposefully pking others.
Also, maybe you have bad time management, but I’ll still be able to grind a char to pvp viability while holding down a full time job and 3 kids in hs sports. It’s easy bud. There’s never a good excuse to make someone not be able to defend themselves. Especially when you can have a (green healer) that the red can’t attack anyway. It’s bad design for a pvp game.
I can tell from your responses that you have that care bear stare when you’re looking at your monitor. No person who’s ever meaningfully engaged in any pvp, would be on board with not being able to defend themselves. Period.
You don't have to keep proving you don't know what you're talking about. You've made it clear already that you don't actually read the posts of people you're raging at.
Anyone can fight at any time, you're not prevented from doing so. You just have to accept that you can't be a braindead PKer in Ashes. You'll have to actually strategize a little bit to avoid this cascade you're so scared of.
The solution isn't to let PKers be the sole determinants of the depths of their consequences. It defeats the purpose of the Corrupted state being a penalty. It's meant to change how you approach combat other players.
People fighting over WBs aren't going to be chronically red because everyone there is fighting, and healing and buffs on combatants flag players combatants as well. A couple people in a ten man group being red isn't gonna impact the group's efficiency by much unless those players have a massive PK history already that would snowball the effects of the Corrupted state.
Now Steven's burden starts, to balance the game and choose to either have many players or to stay true to the game pillars he advertised.
"And just to be clear, that is not for everyone. We are not trying to make a product that appeals to every MMO gamer."
Corruption is meant to deter griefing. It's not meant to deter you from killing other players within reason. And make no mistake, there are plenty of good gameplay reasons to kill other players, and not just in organized events.
And players should absolutely be able to regulate their corruption based on who they choose to kill, by design that is preventing griefing if you stop players from continuing a killing spree of players who don't fight back.
All further punishing a player for not actively griefing does is deter them from ever even killing a single non-combatant in the first place. Which leads to worse workarounds of the system, PvE griefing, and by the time that all happens you may as well just not have open world PVP in the first place.
Say it's "oh you're just afraid of the punishment" all you want. In some sense you're not entirely wrong. And that "fear" will cause players to not engage in what is supposed to be one of the main risks of adventuring into Verra. Other players you don't know, or honestly more specifically other players who are not from your node.
Yeah, I've mentioned some already within this very thread. Doesn't change the fact that going red isn't horrifying or 'too punishing' just because you'll have to alter your playstyle for a short while after if you're going it solo.
If you're in a group, it's a non-issue.
Hard disagree that they should be given a hardcoded get out of jail free condition. They are already to regulate their corruption by disengaging from solo fighting with greens. In group v group, people would have an extremely hard time trying to avoid flagging if they have even a couple AoE spells.
It's far more unhealthy to grant any self-defense clause to a Corrupted player, because then they're encouraged and enabled to taunt and 'PvE grief' other players into attacking them first to absolve them of consequence.
Corruption as a solo player means it's time to pull back and cleanse it.
Corruption within a group is sporadic as it only hits the killer rather than the whole group, and it's very easy to force flags while purple. Thus far we only have a setting to prevent flagging up from hitting greens with AoE, (edit: turns out they did indeed add a toggle for ally AoEs, granted I can't imagine any sane player turning buffs off for combatants) so generally it only takes one AoE charge to get an enemy group flagged up purple against yours provided you didn't all somehow go red at once (which would be a failure in planning and focus and thus, rightly punished)
I don't find the penalties so steep that it would stop me from fighting over contested areas or PKing someone with something I wanted to nab from them, and I'm not even a die hard PvPer. Die hard PvPers looking for a challenge and prepared to adapt their play style around corruption or lackthereof sure won't be scared off by it.
Imo meaningful PKing is when someone is trying to remove competition from a spot (be it a mob one, a boss one or a gathering one). Valuable mobs and bosses (and imo gathering stuff as well) would mostly exist deep in the dungeons. And I'd prefer if respawn locations were, at the very least, outside of the dungeon, if not even further out.
This means that the victim would need to go back to the depth of the dungeon, if they wanted to enact revenge. This would also mean that any BH, that's not already deep in the dungeon, would also have limited time to react to someone with low PKC being Red.
And considering that deep dungeon pve will be the hardest in the game, any other Green players in the vicinity of the Red would be preoccupied with their own content and might not have the time to react to a chat shout of "omg, there's a PKer in this room of the dungeon".
In other words, someone with low PKC should be able to get rid of their corruption right before or right at the point of their victim coming back to the same spot, as long as this PKer is strong enough to do so (which they might not be, cause they had to PK instead of just outfarming the victim).
I knew I should've been more detailed there, but I was too lazy.
What I meant is "no more corruption for those who don't attack a passive green again". Cause, again, I've been talking about meaningful PKers who were simply removing competitors from the premises, so unless they're dumb enough to attack the same dude again, while that dude doesn't fight back AGAIN - the PKer will never gain more corruption while they're Red, even if they're attacked by countless greens.
To me, that's a huge problem, because, as I've said before, this PKer could be the strongest player on their server, and now literally no one would be able to punish them, because they're free to just keep fighting back. The same, but to a worse degree, would apply to whole parties and guilds of PKers. They can go around genociding people, while no one can do anything to them, because when someone tries to attack them - the PKers won't get more corruption if they defend themselves.
This would then require higher tuning of corruption-based stat dampening, in order to prevent the very thing I'm worried about. Which would then impact the players YOU want to help. Those who don't grief, but do PK relatively often, cause they're competing for stuff.
And now you'd have a slow corruption removal balance, coupled with faster stat dampening, which simply means that the players you want to help with your suggestion are now doubly punished, cause they can't fight back due to stat dampening and they also can't remove corruption fast enough, so they get killed way easier.
In other words, I believe that your suggestion would lead to a worse life for meaningful PKers.
Yes, I want that severe punishment for the weak dumbasses that couldn't plan their PK correctly and/or were too weak to cleanse it in time.
You keep saying that the only purpose of the corruption system is to curb griefing, but Steven's own design doesn't agree with that statement, cause otherwise it would be laxer than L2's balancing. And yet we have slower corruption clrearing AND non-purpling Greens. Which means that Steven himself doesn't want to see all that much PKing in Ashes, even outside of griefing situations.
And as I said before, we both agree that there should be more meaningful PKing. I simply don't believe that your suggestion would bring that about in the best way in the end.
I'm not sure I understood this point correctly. I do in fact expect there to not be hordes of PKers, exactly because of how the corruption is balanced right now.
And even the example of my preference of "1% of CCUs are PKers" would be mostly concentrated in high value spots, because people would only be PKing others for top content, while all the casuals and shit outside of dungeons get to live their happy little lives, outside of situations where some dick tries to PK until they destroy their character.
And so, while 100 people might seem like a super small amount of PKers, those 100 people would be concentrated in 30-50 top lvl dungeons. And they'd only exist when the other side of the conflict didn't fight back, which I believe would be a fairly rare occurence, so the overal PKing would be pretty much against all the people who think they can lose more mats by "punishing" their attacker, WHILE farming the best possible content at their lvl.
And if my suggestion of faster clearing was implemented, that kind of approach by the Green player would see them lose their mats more often than not, while not getting anything in return for that loss. And after the first 1-2 PKs for the same spot, the 2 sides would be entering the more dangerous territory of "can I really cleanse my corruption before I get punished" or should I not risk it and try some other approach.
Again, all of this is taken from my personal experience with different balancings of L2's corruption system and my preference from said experience. And based on all of that, I do believe that my suggestion would be quite close to a good and "fair" balance of "PKing is viable, if you have no other way forward, but it's only viable a few times before it gets too risky".
And just to keep this in the broader context of what my prefered vision is - PKC reduction cost would be real high as well, so people who can only win competitions through PKing would still be fucked over in the long run, cause imo the weak deserve that
And I already said that I disagree with it being a worse kind of gameplay. To me, pvp interactions are about players' wills.
If someone can't stand sharing one spot and they feel like they HAVE TO PK the other player - that's a weak-willed person.
If they don't have any friends to call up and simply outfarm the competitor - that's a socially weak player (and in mmos I consider those weak-willed, because they couldn't socialize with others).
If after PKing they're afraid of the consequences - they're weak-willed.
And the same applies to the "pvper" who refuses to flag up - they are weak-willed.
And as for the non-PKing methods of removing a competitor - they all exist on the scale of power. Training mobs onto someone who you kept at <=25% hp would be real damn close to the PKing side and would be weak as fuck. I spit on those players. Outfarming the location solo and denying your opponent's rewards to the point that the opponent just leaves, I personally consider the strongest. And obviously there's the friendship route of "let's party up and do this together". That method would be the socially strongest, cause it often leads to long-lasting relations.
But, to me, all of those methods are still better than just PKing, because PKing directly impacts both competitors in the worst way. And imo, the worst way should have the worst results, especially for the initiator of said way.
I explained my logic in a better way above, so this doesn't really apply to what I said about Steven's potential change in direction.
Players will inevitably congregate in certain locations. And if people know that the stronger players get to go unpunished for their PKing - they'll be less willing to even interact with those players. And I've already explained here what I believe would happen if those unpinished players would get counterbalanced by Intrepid, within your suggestion.
And this is where we disagree, because I personally want PKing to be the last resort action that does only happen in rarest of occasions. And I mainly want this because there's gonna be countless other pvp interactions that I want to see way more than PKing. All while weakly balanced PKing would have a much broader impact across all lvls and all skill-lvl player interactions.
As mentioned, I don't care, but believe me, my time management is quite good and that's the reason why I can play computer games still with my job (full time can mean 40 hours, so low amount of hours as well - the more important aspect is: What responsiblity this job means and what energy is needed to fulfill the high expectations - a full time job can be over at 16:00 and can be a job without real responsibility - of course, if that is so early, it's easy to "manage" rest of the day because more than enough time is left, and in normal jobs, also on weekends, ususlly enough time is left). And family with kids and other hobbies is just normal (in my region: default/standard), the difference usually comes from the job, bud ;-)
It's one of the consequences. You want full freedom which you (and me) experienced in pvp games with permanent pvp servers (or what will happen at pvp-events or in the lawless zone in Ashes), but in the open world there are mechanics that apply to "risk and reward" and thus the attacker/killer will have to think before about his actions because of the consequences and the attacked player can use that mechanic at least for punishment of his attacker/killer, because, again, this game is a sandpark game (intrepid is calling that mix out of themepark and sanbox by themselves) so PvE, PvP and PvX-combined player types must be considered - not "only" your type of (full) pvp-player, you know? But, thats no bad thing, because all the linked systems need different type of players so that overall those systems work together and combined. Only running around pvp-ing will definitely not work. False game, play a Grind PvP whatever bad game where they only content is: Running around in zergs pvp-ing or alone ganking/pk-ing other players for fun.
This is an L2 server that started yesterday. Pvp was happening from nearly lvl one, but this particular clip is from a valuable dungeon for players that are right at the lvl equivalent of AoC's lvl25.
This dungeon is being farmed by groups and not solo. Those groups are already in guilds and are not just pugs. And these guilds can declare war on each other literally right on the spot (you can read the wardec message in chat right at the start of the clip).
And slightly earlier in the stream the dude was running around the dungeon looking at other groups farming spots and was talking with other guildies asking them to come here, cause he wasn't sure if his party alone would be able to secure a farming spot.
To me, this is peak mmo pvp. Group-based, guild-based fighting at any and all lvls, because on every lvl it's much better to be in a group and in a guild (this streamer started playing on this server in a group from lvl 1 btw).
Also, I know the link might seem sus, but L2 streamers on twitch and yt get banned if they stream private servers, so they have to use these random-ass platforms
https://trovo.live/s/BoHpts/549784347691?vid=vc-1397757895622493339&adtag=user.Ludullu.clip
Steven wants to go away from "guild wars are just when you kill each other until someone gets bored" design, which is why wardeccing will be a way more involved process and will revolve around objectives and shit, so I doubt we'll be able to see something like this in Ashes.
But imo, this is still a good example of what I expect to see happening in open world dungeons. Groups farming spots. Other groups finding them and killing them in pvp. I fully expect guild wars to be declared right after the prime time window, just so that the war can allow people to freely PK their enemies all throughout the day until the next prime time.
In other words, I really think that PKing will be quite rare, while pvping will still be abundant as hell.
https://trovo.live/s/BoHpts/549784347691?vid=vc-1397757895626740025&adtag=user.Ludullu.clip
I DEARLY HOPE Ashes will have similar situation, cause to me this is just god damn peak. If I wasn't burnt out on L2 after all these years, and didn't have Ashes in a week - I'd be playing this 100%.
Edit: I skimmed a bit more of the vod and within the next 2 hours this streamer's group was called up to another location to fight a yet another GW. Then came back to their spot that they fought for in the first clip I linked. Then got called up TO YET ANOTHER location to fight the enemy guild from that first clip (don't forget that the war started just 2 hours ago at this point), and then this party came back to their initial spot and just grinded some mobs.
This is peak pvx to me. You defend your farm, help others from your guild do the same when needed and then you farm (while also defending it, cause your enemies don't stop etiher).
And even just this short time period alone showed 3 different locations worth fighting for (there's other for smaller groups or even for solos), and I expect Ashes to have dozens if not hundreds of these on release. We'll have to see how GW end up being designed, but god damn I really hope we get something similar, cause this is glorious.
This is from 2018. The definition Steven has provided us is from 2022. And the primary topic that quote came from was in reference to griefing. But for the heck of it, he also refers to the systems design in that video as corruption being gained specifically through attacking non-combatant players who dont fight back. But as I have said, its outdated.
I am a diehard PvPer. Im also a diehard PvEer believe it or not. And as the risks are currently set on paper, I will be looking for ways to work around the system to deal with problem players who refuse to fight back. Whether that be training mobs, gathering their resources in front of them repeatedly, stealing mobs, etc. I dont want to resort to griefing via PvE, but if thats the route I and others are pushed towards due to the detrimental effect of corruption regardless of the amount of PKs, so be it. All of those things have exponentially less risk than attacking or killing the player as it currently is designed, and these are indeed theoretical work arounds of course.
As we have done many times before, we will simply have to agree to disagree. I am just going to end up repeating myself, as will you. Regardless of who is right or wrong with their opinions or predictions, I hope Steven makes the best decision he can in regards to corruption and maintaining risk not only for those who would become corrupted, but the risk of those would be victims of PvP in the open world.
The issue is punishing griefing, not PvP. compounding corruption for kills that are literally just PvP is directly deterring general PvP, regardless if you consider it "honorable" or not.
And its no different solo than it is with a group. it applies in both regards. And the same maneuvers to use corruption as a weapon/defense as a group resulting in deterring PvP will likely also be a major issue so theres that.
Those things aren't griefing by any reasonable person's metric. It's not possible to 'steal' a resource except through PvP (PK or caravans or post-node sieges), and likewise it's not possible to 'steal' mobs. That's a fundamentally flawed and entitled mindset.
If you can outpace a player to resource nodes, if you can successfully claim looting rights on mobs they're fighting, and if you can push them out without PK, why in the world did you resort to PK in the first place and take on corruption?
So if i train a bunch of mobs on you forcing you to run away and take the resources you were about to grab, fair play?
You think thats a good thing for the game for that sort of player to go unpunished?
This is the biggest and most frequent form of pve griefing that happens in slow grindy games like this. Everquest, Ultima online, DaoC. When combat encounters cost actual downtime and the world is dangerous, trains will be worse than any random dude attacking you.
Youre fine with harassing players as long as PKing is deterred at all costs. Got it. Hypocritical, but got it.
My guess is you'd advocate for toggling PvP on and off as opposed to even allowing for players to openly attack other players.
And a yet another point that Dygz likes to bring up. Mobs are never as aggro as players are. They always (well, almost always) have a leash, so any player that sees a train of mobs going towards them can just run away a bit further and the train conductor will suffer for it. While running away from a PKer would require you to either completely outpace them or for them to lose all interest in you, which rarely happens with PKers whose entire goal is to kill you.
It's up there with your other stupid baseless guesses about how PvP will function in the open world, certainly, and wrong.
And no, since you need it said again, winning a competition over resources isn't harassment. If it was, then this entire game is harassment. Guild and node wars exist expressly to harass and attack enemies in those factions/alliances freely.
If they can't beat you out in pacing, then they can try to kill you to make you leave. Just the same as you wanted to do because they 'stole' your spot and 'stole' your resources.
Purposely following other players to interfere with their gameplay via PVE methods isn't harassment. Got it. You're a bright little crayon.
As I said, if winning a competition over resources is harassment, so are guild wars, so are node wars, so is driving everyone away from a World Boss, so is attacking caravans. This entire game is built up around heavy friction points between players through systems that allow them to screw each other over and deny progress.
If a guild lead decides that they have beef with this one particular trader and make sure to attack every single one of their caravans. It's 'harassment' but it's entirely within the scope of expected and encouraged behavior.
If you really think it's harassment because someone is beating you from resource to resource, outdoing your damage on mobs you want to farm, then by all means report them and see what a GM does about it.
Edit: Good lord it's so damn funny how this boils down to 'Winning the competition over resources without PK is PvE griefing :,( '
Perfect! I was hoping you'd prove my point here.
The only case those things are griefing is when the player doing those things is with the intent to ruin another players gameplay, not if the player is trying to advance themselves within the game.
If your logic is "if you beat another player to or at something, it's fair game", then why are you against players killing(beating) other players fair and square to do the same thing, but in one case your argue players shouldn't be punished for it, but in the case involving PKs seeking the same exact goal you argue players should be severely punished for it?
Winning the competition with or without a PK is not griefing unless the ultimate goal of the offensive player is to ultimately ruin the other players gameplay experience. And NEITHER should be punished the same way as griefing.
You are arguing for general open world PvP to be deterred, not just griefing.