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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.
APEX ORDER statement of events regarding Actual Pirates 11-2-24
Bromel
Member, Alpha Two
As the Team Lead of Apex Order, a guild that doesn't have a million person captive audience, we are using this medium to share our experience with Pirate Software.
These events are the result of a misunderstanding with unfortunate timing. They are further littered with false accusations, baseless claims, and what we see as a gross overreaction that violates the spirit of the testing environment.
Earlier in the afternoon of 11.2.24 a group of Apex Order members were farming inside the Ursin Cave on the top level. A group from Actual Pirates came in the cave several times as they were farming the mobs on the lower level. Both parties passed each other and cleared bears together for an extended time without hostilities. At one point the group from Actual Pirates stopped where our group was sitting. Actual Pirates immediately flagged and engaged killing our group's cleric and several others. Our group was surprise attacked and defeated, it's part of the game. Our group revived and moved to a different location to avoid further conflict. We moved to a location outside of Ursin Caves on the south side of that mountain farming bears.
Later that evening our group was still pulling bears from all over the hill side. One of our pullers heard combat and went to have a look. A group of Actual Pirates was farming bears right over the hill from us on the north side. Members that were in our group were also in the group that was killed earlier by the group from AP. Our group then gathered to engage in pvp with AP as a continuation of the earlier engagement over Ursin Caves.
We had no previous knowledge that the streamer known as Pirate Software was in the group we were about to engage. We had no way of knowing that he was writing a bug report. All of that information we found out after the fact. When we engaged the group of Actual Pirates we did not even see Pirate Software whose character is 'Maldavious' until he emerged from behind the group. He was only then engaged in combat.
I am a 44 year old. I do not and have not ever watched streamers, nor do I have the desire to. I did not know who Pirate Software was. In the group were my daughter, and my 13 year old son. We were testing a game that we love and engaged in pvp for fun. It was not a group of hardcore pvpers it was a family group. We did not travel across the map to find him or stream snipe Pirate Software. We merely happened upon the Actual Pirate group because we were in the same area killing bears just over the hill from them. We had absolutely no idea Pirate Software was writing a bug report at the time. When we later learned he was in the middle of a bug report we issued an apology. If we had that knowledge previously we would not have attacked the Actual Pirates group. There was no way for us to know this. It was unfortunate timing.
We had planned to not loot any Actual Pirates, as was said to them by one of our members. Even in pvp we can have respect for one another. GG Actual Pirates got a group of us, Apex Order got a group of them. This type of pvp is in the spirit of the game design. The Apex Order group was heading to town to log for the night. We did not plan to come back and prolong a conflict. We left the area, with the intent of letting the Actual Pirate group get back to enjoying/testing the game.
Again this started as a misunderstanding.
The events that followed...
An Apex Order recruit had died and respawned at the shrine outside of Ursin Caves. He spawned into a group of Actual Pirates that were also at the shrine. The Actual Pirates group including Pirate Software then killed this Apex recruit. As he tried to respawn they continued to kill him up to four times, camping him at the shrine. After repeated deaths, speaking from frustration the Apex recruit said he was going to report Actual Pirates for shrine camping. Moments after being made aware what was said, Apex Order leadership counseled this recruit. This was merely a heated exchange after pvp. No reports were made by this recruit nor any of our members. This was then blown out of proportion by Pirate Software claiming on stream our entire team was going to mass report him. This was yet another baseless accusation.
The following day as some of our Apex members began to log in. Our members were attacked in town by Actual Pirates, while at the vendor, storage and crafting tables. There were multiple instances of these attacks in town by Actual Pirates across several nodes. After killing the Apex member in town, Actual Pirates would then run to the shrine to kill the player again as they spawned at the shrine. Sometimes this would go on for upwards of several deaths to the same player. Actual Pirates players would never go corrupted despite attacking unflagged players that were not fighting back. Sometimes killing them while they were still in the loading screen from the previous death.
While still in development the corruption system and town guards do not (as of yet) offer any protection to non combatant players in Alpha 2, Phase 1 testing. Some members from Actual Pirates are taking advantage of this by locking down town nodes. Attacking any of our members that are seen within the nodes. Because of Actual Pirates massive membership they can easily lock our members out of every node, denying them access to test any content within the node itself. We believe this is outside the scope of Steven's vision for pvp risk vs reward. This style of game play only hurts player's experience and their ability to actively test systems for Intrepid Studios.
In Steven's own words "Now the question is, when risk becomes something that doesn't stop other players from impacting your gameplay in a negative and harassing and repetitive manner. The motivation to do that action is less about their personal advancement and more about impacting your gameplay, because when they elicit the response of anger or rage from the player, they feel a sense of accomplishment. That in my opinion is what griefing is. It is outside of the expectation of the gameplay behavior that is communicated in the design philosophy." – Steven Sharif
Apex Order members follow a strict set of Rules Of Engagement during the Alpha 2 testing. These rules include 1. No pvp combat within the town nodes 2. No spawn shrine camping. We hold our members to a higher standard, even if other guilds do not. We believe in the vision and development of Ashes of Creation and wish to give other testers the respect they deserve.
In conclusion....
Pirate Software's stated intent on his stream, is to harass an entire guild, until they leave the server, during the Alpha testing phase of a game.
Apex Order was falsely accused of a stream snipe by Pirate Software. From the time the Apex Order group attacked the Actual Pirate group it took Pirate Software less than a minute to falsely accuse us of a streamer snipe as shown on his twitch stream.
Apex Order was falsely accused of knowingly attacking while Pirate Software was writing a bug report. We had no way of knowing this.
Apex Order was falsely accused of mass reporting in an attempt to get a ban on Pirate Software. As detailed in our statement, no reports of any kind by any of our members were ever made. Go ask customer service, we'll wait.
Apex Order leadership has reached out to Pirate Software in private correspondence explaining the misunderstanding and seeking a retraction of his false accusations to no avail.
All of the false accusations are a result of Pirate Software being pvped in a PvX game. Are streamers untouchable in pvp?
If you do kill a streamer what is stopping them from accusing you of a stream snipe? They can accuse you without limit or evidence.
The attacks on Apex Order membership and content gating are the result of a massive streamer zerg guild mentality on a smaller guild.
Team Lead
Apex Order - AoC
-Bromel
These events are the result of a misunderstanding with unfortunate timing. They are further littered with false accusations, baseless claims, and what we see as a gross overreaction that violates the spirit of the testing environment.
Earlier in the afternoon of 11.2.24 a group of Apex Order members were farming inside the Ursin Cave on the top level. A group from Actual Pirates came in the cave several times as they were farming the mobs on the lower level. Both parties passed each other and cleared bears together for an extended time without hostilities. At one point the group from Actual Pirates stopped where our group was sitting. Actual Pirates immediately flagged and engaged killing our group's cleric and several others. Our group was surprise attacked and defeated, it's part of the game. Our group revived and moved to a different location to avoid further conflict. We moved to a location outside of Ursin Caves on the south side of that mountain farming bears.
Later that evening our group was still pulling bears from all over the hill side. One of our pullers heard combat and went to have a look. A group of Actual Pirates was farming bears right over the hill from us on the north side. Members that were in our group were also in the group that was killed earlier by the group from AP. Our group then gathered to engage in pvp with AP as a continuation of the earlier engagement over Ursin Caves.
We had no previous knowledge that the streamer known as Pirate Software was in the group we were about to engage. We had no way of knowing that he was writing a bug report. All of that information we found out after the fact. When we engaged the group of Actual Pirates we did not even see Pirate Software whose character is 'Maldavious' until he emerged from behind the group. He was only then engaged in combat.
I am a 44 year old. I do not and have not ever watched streamers, nor do I have the desire to. I did not know who Pirate Software was. In the group were my daughter, and my 13 year old son. We were testing a game that we love and engaged in pvp for fun. It was not a group of hardcore pvpers it was a family group. We did not travel across the map to find him or stream snipe Pirate Software. We merely happened upon the Actual Pirate group because we were in the same area killing bears just over the hill from them. We had absolutely no idea Pirate Software was writing a bug report at the time. When we later learned he was in the middle of a bug report we issued an apology. If we had that knowledge previously we would not have attacked the Actual Pirates group. There was no way for us to know this. It was unfortunate timing.
We had planned to not loot any Actual Pirates, as was said to them by one of our members. Even in pvp we can have respect for one another. GG Actual Pirates got a group of us, Apex Order got a group of them. This type of pvp is in the spirit of the game design. The Apex Order group was heading to town to log for the night. We did not plan to come back and prolong a conflict. We left the area, with the intent of letting the Actual Pirate group get back to enjoying/testing the game.
Again this started as a misunderstanding.
The events that followed...
An Apex Order recruit had died and respawned at the shrine outside of Ursin Caves. He spawned into a group of Actual Pirates that were also at the shrine. The Actual Pirates group including Pirate Software then killed this Apex recruit. As he tried to respawn they continued to kill him up to four times, camping him at the shrine. After repeated deaths, speaking from frustration the Apex recruit said he was going to report Actual Pirates for shrine camping. Moments after being made aware what was said, Apex Order leadership counseled this recruit. This was merely a heated exchange after pvp. No reports were made by this recruit nor any of our members. This was then blown out of proportion by Pirate Software claiming on stream our entire team was going to mass report him. This was yet another baseless accusation.
The following day as some of our Apex members began to log in. Our members were attacked in town by Actual Pirates, while at the vendor, storage and crafting tables. There were multiple instances of these attacks in town by Actual Pirates across several nodes. After killing the Apex member in town, Actual Pirates would then run to the shrine to kill the player again as they spawned at the shrine. Sometimes this would go on for upwards of several deaths to the same player. Actual Pirates players would never go corrupted despite attacking unflagged players that were not fighting back. Sometimes killing them while they were still in the loading screen from the previous death.
While still in development the corruption system and town guards do not (as of yet) offer any protection to non combatant players in Alpha 2, Phase 1 testing. Some members from Actual Pirates are taking advantage of this by locking down town nodes. Attacking any of our members that are seen within the nodes. Because of Actual Pirates massive membership they can easily lock our members out of every node, denying them access to test any content within the node itself. We believe this is outside the scope of Steven's vision for pvp risk vs reward. This style of game play only hurts player's experience and their ability to actively test systems for Intrepid Studios.
In Steven's own words "Now the question is, when risk becomes something that doesn't stop other players from impacting your gameplay in a negative and harassing and repetitive manner. The motivation to do that action is less about their personal advancement and more about impacting your gameplay, because when they elicit the response of anger or rage from the player, they feel a sense of accomplishment. That in my opinion is what griefing is. It is outside of the expectation of the gameplay behavior that is communicated in the design philosophy." – Steven Sharif
Apex Order members follow a strict set of Rules Of Engagement during the Alpha 2 testing. These rules include 1. No pvp combat within the town nodes 2. No spawn shrine camping. We hold our members to a higher standard, even if other guilds do not. We believe in the vision and development of Ashes of Creation and wish to give other testers the respect they deserve.
In conclusion....
Pirate Software's stated intent on his stream, is to harass an entire guild, until they leave the server, during the Alpha testing phase of a game.
Apex Order was falsely accused of a stream snipe by Pirate Software. From the time the Apex Order group attacked the Actual Pirate group it took Pirate Software less than a minute to falsely accuse us of a streamer snipe as shown on his twitch stream.
Apex Order was falsely accused of knowingly attacking while Pirate Software was writing a bug report. We had no way of knowing this.
Apex Order was falsely accused of mass reporting in an attempt to get a ban on Pirate Software. As detailed in our statement, no reports of any kind by any of our members were ever made. Go ask customer service, we'll wait.
Apex Order leadership has reached out to Pirate Software in private correspondence explaining the misunderstanding and seeking a retraction of his false accusations to no avail.
All of the false accusations are a result of Pirate Software being pvped in a PvX game. Are streamers untouchable in pvp?
If you do kill a streamer what is stopping them from accusing you of a stream snipe? They can accuse you without limit or evidence.
The attacks on Apex Order membership and content gating are the result of a massive streamer zerg guild mentality on a smaller guild.
Team Lead
Apex Order - AoC
-Bromel
18
Comments
Do you by any chance have chat screenshots of the moment you killed their party the first time? Thor said that one of your members said "won't loot you, love you" or smth like that, which I believe was the reason for the assumption of stream sniping.
Thor's chat was blurred, so it's his word against yours, so some factual info would be great (from a third party would be even better imo).
If that was just worded strangely, I doubt Thor will be convinced that it wasn't a stream snipe, and I personally believe that Steven won't care about the overall interaction.
As for the corruption side of this issue, the PTR patchnotes indicate that Intrepid have already addressed this issue, but adding this Hopefully this addition will resolve the issue of people PKing others with no repercussions.
I do hope that Thor changes his mind on this, because misunderstandings happen.
The moment you the streamer use your stream to RECRUIT IN GAME ALLIES, all protection of the Stream from 'sniping' is removed in my opinion. So I find Pirates to be out of line on the basic principle here that they even feel accusing people of 'stream sniping', they might as wll accuse people of fighting back in PvP while they are at it.
And that is a completely valid response in a game like this (hence Steven's comment on reddit).
The only problem here is the alleged misunderstanding. If it did take place (and I personally believe the OP) - Thor should remove the KOS status and we'll be done with this whole situation.
But none of this is any different from a normal pvp guilds going "oh, you killed our member? you're KOS now". Yes, some might view that as an extreme response, but that's just how these games work. If that guild then does some stupid shit themselves - they'll be going on KOS lists of many other guilds and will suffer as well.
Intrepid not getting involved is the perfect call.
As long as the drama stays in game it should ble in bounds.
Apex taking this drama out of game and to every venue in the community is a weak move.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
It would be, if Apex could put up a fight. What's going on on Resna between Enveus and Nova Ordem is much more in that ballpark. The situation here looks more like the big bully pushing the little one around on the schoolyard. Not interesting to watch, no challenge for the Pirates guys, and not fun for anyone (unless one likes killing people who don't fight back - and wouldn't have a chance even if they did).
Apex didn't take it out of game. Apex just responded to the fact it was already in the public eye, with only Pirate Software's misconceptions out there.
Your actions have consequences and I guess there is just a mass of gamers that cant or refuse to conceptualize that. It's an alpha. Take it as a learning experience. Even IF Apex's leader had nothing to do with it and its a rogue group of recruits its his responsibility to vet the members. If you can't hang just regroup, start fresh, and don't give every moron with a pulse a guild tag.
Based!
@andi
Don't start fights with bully's then, now you know a bully. Act accordingly.
@abyssal
They took the drama to the GMs, reddit and now here. None of these are in the game.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
If Thor was not a streamer, or just wasn't streaming at the time - literally none of this would've happened, cause it would just be a pvp encounter rather than a "they saw that we were in the middle of a bug report and decided to kill us at that exact moment".
I don't know that that is true.
There are large guilds that are not made up of streamers.
This type of interaction is also something I think/hope is very intended.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Apex leader may of not knew who he was but his members clearly did as they immediately were in his twitch chat getting banned and making alt accounts named things like "Piratekilledbystreamsnipe" to continue to talk shit. Its kind of hard to feign ignorance after that.
It doesn't matter either way tho. Who cares what his reason is. He could of been a non streamer with a large guild and even larger ego that just decided ok F those guys. It's still a case of F around and find out. You murder random people with zero information on them just for hahas and it might bite you in the ass.
Even that pirate software is stating that he was filling out bug reports (why not rescuing puppies?) , and you mention your children is absurd. You had a pvp fight and that's it. Whyyy seriously Whyyy is this story relevant at all. Just because it's about some streamer?
It's enough that they'd attacked you before, and you were returning it.
It's enough that they had some drops that you wanted.
It's enough that they're in the same area and you just fancy flagging.
These streamers need to start realising that NOT EVERYTHING IS ABOUT THEM.
While Intrepid may have added in blight, that isn't there to prevent this kind of thing. All it would do is curtail the very end of it, and give AP something they need to work on to get back to where they started. It is essentially a time sink penalty for them, rather than a prevention.
In other words, this absolutely is the game.
Are we really classing the game's forum as disconnected from the game?
ps. wanted to add that there is nothing wrong with conflicts. Even absurd or unfair ones. They give life to pvpv-oriented games. This doesn't apply to streamers and their fans, though. You can almost always reason one way or another with a normal guild if you desire so. But you can't reason with rabid fans and a streamer whose only motivation is content. They dont care about the downsides of conflict or wasted resources. This problem multiplies when the streamer is huge and has nothing between his ears.
Yes, the forum is out of the game world.
It's not about the fact that he is a streamer.
It's about those who attacked him not understanding that there are like Actual Pirates1-20 guilds on that server. Clear as day for anyone to see. I am on a different server and I knew about Actual Pirates.
If they didn't think attacking one of those guilds was attacking all of them. That is their lack of social awareness and they are now learning the consequences.
What thor has done here may seem like a over reaction. To me it's quite brilliant that he has used this moment to teach the community about consequences in ashes.
This is all reinforced by Intrepids response.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
But Pirates apparently attacked them first?
So what, there's this big bully zerg guild, and you cannot fight back now if they attack you? Just take it I guess?
This is exactly the sort of problem I made a post about, and I've also seen several other posts written about it.
Large zergs are a plague to any game, especially if it's focused around PvP, and if they can just lock people out from content.