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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.
A2 Fourth Week - Toxicity, Griefing & Exploiting
Kiwi_
Member, Alpha Two
Good day Intrepid & Alpha Testers!
For all of the past 3 weekends I did feedback posts with 20-30 points each for the different stuff I tested, issues I encountered and so on. Initially I planned on continuing this for every week as I take notes during testing, especially for the stuff that don't belong in bug reports and during the server downtime throughout the week I write the more detailed feedback post. However, this weekend I will focus on 3 points that are in my opinion part of one big issue, that I personally feel should be adressed as soon as possible because it keeps getting worse every day the servers are online.
Feel free to discuss, disagree, agree or add, thank you for taking your time reading this!'
So what is the Topic of this post?
Toxicity, Griefing and Exploiting.
Those three have one thing in common, they are a big part of why the community in games has shifted over the past years. And that not being a good direction. Of course all of this is subjective, but I think a lot of people can relate.
The community of people that are playing games, MMOs in the case of Ashes has dramatically shifted to being more and more toxic, unfriendly and the main part about the gameplay that people consider fun is consisting of ruining the fun at the game for others. Now the things I'm going to list might be more true on some realms than on others, but just taking a quick look through the different discord channels pretty much shows that it's about the same for most of them.
I will again put details in spoilers so it's easier to skip stuff that you think is irrelevant.
We need ingame support now already.
A toxic community will kill any game.
Griefing has to be bannable, not just when the gaming world is watching.
Exploiters need to be banned as well.
Something needs to be done about abusable PvP systems quickly.
Feel free to share your experiences on your realm, whether you share my opinion or not! Have you experienced the types of toxicity and griefing on your realm?
For all of the past 3 weekends I did feedback posts with 20-30 points each for the different stuff I tested, issues I encountered and so on. Initially I planned on continuing this for every week as I take notes during testing, especially for the stuff that don't belong in bug reports and during the server downtime throughout the week I write the more detailed feedback post. However, this weekend I will focus on 3 points that are in my opinion part of one big issue, that I personally feel should be adressed as soon as possible because it keeps getting worse every day the servers are online.
Feel free to discuss, disagree, agree or add, thank you for taking your time reading this!'
So what is the Topic of this post?
Toxicity, Griefing and Exploiting.
Those three have one thing in common, they are a big part of why the community in games has shifted over the past years. And that not being a good direction. Of course all of this is subjective, but I think a lot of people can relate.
The community of people that are playing games, MMOs in the case of Ashes has dramatically shifted to being more and more toxic, unfriendly and the main part about the gameplay that people consider fun is consisting of ruining the fun at the game for others. Now the things I'm going to list might be more true on some realms than on others, but just taking a quick look through the different discord channels pretty much shows that it's about the same for most of them.
I will again put details in spoilers so it's easier to skip stuff that you think is irrelevant.
We need ingame support now already.
From what Intrepid shares to far, for example, the reply you get when writing a support ticket about player reports, says that there won't be any ingame support during the Alpha.
In my opinion this already starts causing one of the worst things than can happen to any game. The community is getting more and more toxic every weekend, people grief, people exploit and nothing is being done about any of that. This not being addressed right away causes more and more people to either join that type of behaviour or simply stop testing.
For me personally, this type of stuff being talked about by Steven yes, but nothing being done about it causes me personally not to quit testing, but I am much less motivated to put effort in or to test with others, because the entire mood on the realm is shifting. There's the people that enjoy ruining the fun for others, but not testing much, don't know if they even report the issues they cause themselves, like using abusable mechanics to terrorize low level players - and then there's the people that genuinely want to help the game with the testing, but are being kept from doing so.
Personally, this leaves me with the same feeling that I have encountered in so many other games, where there were claims that they'd do something about it, but eventually nothing every happened.
In my opinion this already starts causing one of the worst things than can happen to any game. The community is getting more and more toxic every weekend, people grief, people exploit and nothing is being done about any of that. This not being addressed right away causes more and more people to either join that type of behaviour or simply stop testing.
For me personally, this type of stuff being talked about by Steven yes, but nothing being done about it causes me personally not to quit testing, but I am much less motivated to put effort in or to test with others, because the entire mood on the realm is shifting. There's the people that enjoy ruining the fun for others, but not testing much, don't know if they even report the issues they cause themselves, like using abusable mechanics to terrorize low level players - and then there's the people that genuinely want to help the game with the testing, but are being kept from doing so.
Personally, this leaves me with the same feeling that I have encountered in so many other games, where there were claims that they'd do something about it, but eventually nothing every happened.
A toxic community will kill any game.
This might be a bit drastic to say for some people, but the reason I believe this to be true are simple to explain.
A toxic community always results in the same things from my experience.
- Toxic people are having fun harassing people that just want to enjoy the game
- If nothing is being done about it the harassed people eventually quit
- Being left with nobody to harass, many of the toxic people will quit as well after some time
- Few players = little income for the game
Now I know that Ashes isn't about being all fun, peace and happiness at all times, but just because there is PvP in a game, that's not the reason it's getting toxic. 10-15 years ago there was a different mentality than there is now, systems that worked back then, issues that got solved within the community itself back then, all that is different now, and it needs to be seen and to be acknowledged. People will abuse things, exploits and mechanics that are abusable, people will use the given systems to actively try to be as toxic as they can be. Because again - ruining the fun for others is their fun.
And from my experience, honestly, I have been part of the toxicity problem myself until around 2-3 years ago, this won't resolve itself. It needs the game devs to actively work against it. As long as there are abusable systems, people will abuse it.
A toxic community always results in the same things from my experience.
- Toxic people are having fun harassing people that just want to enjoy the game
- If nothing is being done about it the harassed people eventually quit
- Being left with nobody to harass, many of the toxic people will quit as well after some time
- Few players = little income for the game
Now I know that Ashes isn't about being all fun, peace and happiness at all times, but just because there is PvP in a game, that's not the reason it's getting toxic. 10-15 years ago there was a different mentality than there is now, systems that worked back then, issues that got solved within the community itself back then, all that is different now, and it needs to be seen and to be acknowledged. People will abuse things, exploits and mechanics that are abusable, people will use the given systems to actively try to be as toxic as they can be. Because again - ruining the fun for others is their fun.
And from my experience, honestly, I have been part of the toxicity problem myself until around 2-3 years ago, this won't resolve itself. It needs the game devs to actively work against it. As long as there are abusable systems, people will abuse it.
Griefing has to be bannable, not just when the gaming world is watching.
This might sound a little harsh, but it's honestly just the way I feel about this.
I personally think it's great that people got banned for griefing Asmongold like that, but as a normal player it currently feels like, while this issue was addressed in the stream and at first had me feeling happy that there was something done about the issue, griefers on other realms, griefing players that are not Asmongold get away unpunished, they do whatever the hell they want, they kill low level players, blame it on other guilds by creating guilds with similar names and whatnot. Reporting this however only resulted in being told that there wont be any ingame support during the Alpha. So now I personally feel like I think a lot of people do - why does this seemingly only matter when it happens to one of the biggest streamers? It feels really shitty as a normal player. I fully support banning griefers, but all players have to matter equally.
I personally think it's great that people got banned for griefing Asmongold like that, but as a normal player it currently feels like, while this issue was addressed in the stream and at first had me feeling happy that there was something done about the issue, griefers on other realms, griefing players that are not Asmongold get away unpunished, they do whatever the hell they want, they kill low level players, blame it on other guilds by creating guilds with similar names and whatnot. Reporting this however only resulted in being told that there wont be any ingame support during the Alpha. So now I personally feel like I think a lot of people do - why does this seemingly only matter when it happens to one of the biggest streamers? It feels really shitty as a normal player. I fully support banning griefers, but all players have to matter equally.
Exploiters need to be banned as well.
This honestly seems to be one of the most common issues across the realms from what I could gather on the discord. Because people are using exploits to get an advantage over others and then use that advantage to grief. Whether it's getting to level 25 within the first 2 weekends, duping or alike. The issue results in toxic people, that are already causing trouble for the community use exploits to have an even worse impact. The discord is flooded with evidence, screenshots, clips showing people exploiting, even using scripts and so far nothing is happening.
I know exploits need to be tested, they need to be discovered and validated. But it should be easy to check the logs for people that killed the same exploitable monsters more than 10 times, that duped the same item more than 3 times, I understand this is a lot of work that needs to be put in, but if it's not being addressed in time it might actually damage the game, as there are already people quitting because of it, and we're only in week 4.
And isn't that harmful for the testing as well? You're losing players that test different systems to players that farm the same exploitable monster for hours straight, probably not even reporting the exploit.
I know exploits need to be tested, they need to be discovered and validated. But it should be easy to check the logs for people that killed the same exploitable monsters more than 10 times, that duped the same item more than 3 times, I understand this is a lot of work that needs to be put in, but if it's not being addressed in time it might actually damage the game, as there are already people quitting because of it, and we're only in week 4.
And isn't that harmful for the testing as well? You're losing players that test different systems to players that farm the same exploitable monster for hours straight, probably not even reporting the exploit.
Something needs to be done about abusable PvP systems quickly.
I personally feel that the changes to corruption were really good, it definitely caused people on our realm to go corrupt less often. But while this has reduced the number of corrupted griefers, people have found new ways to abuse the PvP systems.
I know solutions aren't really the feedback you're looking for, but I think there's a need for quick temporary solutions that help the harassed people until you find a solution that works for the finished game.
Here's a list of things that I think should be looked into:
- Guild wars need to not be instant for now
I know solutions aren't really the feedback you're looking for, but I think there's a need for quick temporary solutions that help the harassed people until you find a solution that works for the finished game.
Here's a list of things that I think should be looked into:
- Guild wars need to not be instant for now
I feel a 5min time frame between the guild war announcement and the start of the war, making players attackable would already do a lot to prevent people from abusing it for now. Because the way the system currently is, on our realm there are people running around, declaring war on any group of players they see grinding, no matter the level etc, kill them until they leave their guild and then move on to the next victim. This has been insanely frustrating to a lot of people on our server this weekend. Giving people the opportunity to leave the guild b4 turning into a free kill would at least lower that frustration imo
- Make Home Nodes a Safe Zone
While I understand why guild wars result in free kills within a node, this is being abused like crazy atm. People can't even craft or go afk for a minute if they're in a guild. I don't think all Nodes should be safe for everyone, but making the node you're citizen in a safe zone for you could help fighting the rising toxicity levels a bit. (this should obviously not apply during a Node War)
- Put a Level Lock for Guild Wars to protect lower players.
By this I don't mean a general level restriction for guild wars. I am talking about having a minimum of 5 levels below the highest level guild member being attackable in a guild war. So that for example, if you have an exploiter guild with multiple people being lvl 25 already declaring war on another guild, they can only attack people of level 20 or higher. So if they go around, declaring war on low level guilds that are farming around the lvl 12 areas, they can't attack them.
- Remove Exp Penalty for GW, NW and force flag PvP deaths
I think having an exp penalty on PvP deaths are good, but not for all PvP mechanics. I feel like there should be a difference made between stuff like Guild War, Force Flag PvP and Node War vs. PvP zone, Caravans and Corruption. The last three really are a risk&reward thing, but I feel for the others, losing items and time is penalty enough.
Feel free to share your experiences on your realm, whether you share my opinion or not! Have you experienced the types of toxicity and griefing on your realm?
1
Comments
I think the devs will be working to correct known bugs to prevent further exploiting but being this is alpha, it might not happen immediately and new bugs that can be exploited will always pop up.
I Push for skill based fluid combat, mechanic counterplay, and player+build individuality.
Theorycrafter, Engineer, Car guy. Learning UE5
Actually it is not a crazy take and I have been a part of alpha and betas (including games like WoW) that have banned testers for finding bugs and continuing to exploit them during test.
It is not the job of a tester to find a bug and exploit the shit out of it to gain an unfair advantage over others in test. It is our job to find the bugs and provide enough details that developers have an understanding on how to reproduce and subsequently fix the bug.
It is asinine to suggest that big guilds need to dupe thousands of gold for the developers (and anyone else with two brain cells) to know that using the exploit will result in an unfair advantage over others which could actually have a detrimental impact on testing.
Again the notion that the testing needs to be a fair environment is silly.
The dangerous part is if they implement blanket bans on something as trivial as killing certain mobs over and over. What could happen is that someone unknowingly gets banned because their rotation had a broken mob in it...... in an alpha test where people are spending 40hours mob grinding. Finding people blatantly exploiting and reporting them is fine, but in the current state of things, it could be dangerous to start blanket bans due to bugs.
Also just to be clear I was not stating that people needed to abuse exploits. Maybe you misconstrued my point about griefers needing to prod the system in every way possible to find loopholes.
I Push for skill based fluid combat, mechanic counterplay, and player+build individuality.
Theorycrafter, Engineer, Car guy. Learning UE5
You are collecting data when you encounter and report an exploit, yes. But if you start abusing it, you alter the alpha experience, leading to inaccurate data and distorted gameplay feedback. This is bad in every way.
If there exists an exploit during a test, that test is already fubar in terms of inaccurate data. Banning people at that point just removes people that are actively looking for exploits. Its like bailing water out of a boat with a gaping hole in the bottom. The holes must be addressed to a reasonable point(likely close to launch) before starting to enforce and ban people.
Its not great, but exploiters are necessary people to have try and poke holes in the system.
I Push for skill based fluid combat, mechanic counterplay, and player+build individuality.
Theorycrafter, Engineer, Car guy. Learning UE5
I am not suggesting that a testing environment needs to be fair or that there should be a wipe due to the excessive dupe exploitation some testers and entire guilds are accused of using. I also think it would be unfair to try to hold the developers accountable to try to make this fair by removing all the duped resources from this segment of alpha testing .
I agree
,
This is what I suggest. I am not holding the developers responsible for spending time during alpha to look into this nor am I suggesting that they ban all the heavy exploiters, I am just stating I do agree with your statement that exploiters absolutely should not be banned and that it is a crazy take. There are games that do this and if Intrepid decides to ban the most prolific exploit abusers, I would not be opposed to the action nor think it was crazy.
Like I said in another post, it is not the job of a tester to find a bug and exploit the shit out of it to gain an unfair advantage over others in test. It is our job to find the bugs and provide enough details that developers have an understanding on how to reproduce and subsequently fix the bug.
The developer and anyone with two brain cells knows the detrimental impact that duping thousands of gold will have on a game without players having to actually do this for their own personal advantage over others in test.
Strictly no. Please remember that my concern here is not about identifying and reporting exploits—this is, of course, important. The issue lies solely in the excessive abuse (these two words are the important part) of such exploits. If stricter penalties are applied (in cases of excessive abuse), it will occur less frequently in the future, thereby reducing its impact on collected data. And no, as long as the exploits aren’t game-breaking and aren’t used excessively, they only minimally impact the data.
This only removes players who are already excessively abusing such things, which in no way aligns with fulfilling the responsibilities of an alpha tester. You stray from the path of being a responsible alpha tester the moment you excessively exploit something that isn’t intended. From that point onward, you’re no longer gathering meaningful data or contributing to the improvement of the game during its alpha phase.
However, I believe that before such bans are issued, there should be an official warning and clear communication about what constitutes exploit abuse (even tho this should be common sense).
Agreed.
I've just seen it too many times where companies ban and then give the cold shoulder. For people to come invest hundreds of dollars to help test for bugs, just to risk being banned for testing bugs can create a controversy. ESO had done it many times in the past with blanket bans for basic game bugs. Several times banning streamers, who had the political sway to be unbanned, but other players were not so lucky and lost hundreds to thousands of dollars+hours of investment.
I Push for skill based fluid combat, mechanic counterplay, and player+build individuality.
Theorycrafter, Engineer, Car guy. Learning UE5
I don't think in-game support is necessary. However, I would suggest disabling systems (maybe just partially) that cause particular problems for players until a solution or improvement is implemented.
Nodes as Safe Zone
I agree that nodes (not just home nodes) should be a sort of safe zone, but only in the sense that node guards should always intervene if someone attacks. It shouldn't matter that the players are involved in a guild war. The node guards should keep up the peace. The guards are already attacking PvP-flagged players. So why an exception for guild wars? PvP arenas should be the only place in a node where fights have no consequences.
Guild wars should not be instant.
I agree that guild wars should not be active instantly, but this should always be the case. This would not prevent players from fighting over a spot. It prevents griefing and protects the people who are AFK for a moment.
Level Lock for Guild Wars
I do not think there should be a level lock. There are advantages to being in a guild. You have to be able to live with the disadvantages. However, I would suggest that the average level combined with the number of members should be a criterion for declaring war. What would be the advantage of a guild of high level characters declaring war on a guild of almost entirely low level characters?
Remove Exp Penalty for GW, NW and force flag PvP deaths
It does not need to be removed. It could possibly be slightly lower. If you are afraid of the XP loss, you just have to stay away from the fight:
That is exactly my point. Right now, they're doing it with the only reason being to harass new/low players. There is no logic reason other than having fun at ruining it for others.
I should probably clarify again that I'd only like to see a solution like that for the time being until they find a solution that stops the griefing, not something I would like to see in the final game.
Right, but when it comes to excessive exploiting like duping thousands of gold, it is not really a risk someone has to fear, it is a choice they actual make while testing.
Wars are the primary event that I think death stat debuffs should be eliminated from as it tends to favor the larger/bigger/stronger guilds.
Sure, instances where it is more black and white make sense to detect and review easily. I'm just warning against setting the precedent of blanket bans like the OP commented on with killing a mob more than 10x from their example.
I Push for skill based fluid combat, mechanic counterplay, and player+build individuality.
Theorycrafter, Engineer, Car guy. Learning UE5
I think you and I are on the same page when it comes to the more blatant exploits for possible action during test. After launch, they can dig deeper if there are issues but in test, I think it makes more sense to focus on the most egregious.
Steven did address this during an interview and regarding exploits warned testers "Don't use it for bad, don't take advantage of it, and don't cause problems with it" and Margaret went on to say they would be looking at logs and data and could ban or suspend players from test.
This 100%. Most of the forum complaints derive from folks thinking they are playing a game that isn't meeting their expectations - because it's literally not the game yet.
Well, well, well. How the turntables.
On a serious note, in support of the OP, excessive abuse of an exploit or joining in on it when the bug is known, does not provide quality testers. Banning may be extreme, but a phase suspension or revoking alpha cosmetics would send the message. This isn't to make the game fair, because it makes no sense in an Alpha state. However, this is for AoC to show what kind of players and testers they appreciate and to practice their customer support responses to issues now.
We are, and they can see and read everything you do or say in the game/chat.
It would be best if they make an example of someone abusing an exploit, but avoided mass banning. Funny enough if you think about it, if they got rid of all of the exploiters, who would find the exploits before launch? I'd rather find all of the exploits before launch than mass ban early on. If anything they could begin a list of names.
I Push for skill based fluid combat, mechanic counterplay, and player+build individuality.
Theorycrafter, Engineer, Car guy. Learning UE5
Intrepid has asked everybody to abuse this system and take it on video because they wanted to know exactly how they duped items. Why the hell Intrepid would ban them when they specifically asked them to do it ?
It's an alpha to fix bugs. People are exploiting so that Intrepid can fix it. I don't exploit and I think it's a good thing to do so in an Alpha.
Now, if Intrepid doesn't remove duped items after an exploit, it's their fault.
????? There is a difference between aggressively trying to find bugs, and aggressively exploiting those bugs.
If you think that players need to exploit duping thousands of gold for a dev to fix this or for anyone with brain cells to know that this will have a negative impact in the game and/or test, you are confused.
As a tester, it is our job to report bugs with enough details that the devs can replicate the bug and fix it. We are not being asked to abuse the bug, nor do we need to.
When Steven was asked ‘are we allowed to find weaknesses and hacks’ he replied that he wanted players to find bugs and that they should report them immediately. He followed this with the warning that testers were NOT to use the exploit for bad, for an advantage or for causing trouble. Margaret followed his comments with the fact that they had access to logs and other data and would be looking at this information and can see who is doing the bad things and that they would take action on these accounts and mentioned both suspension and banning.