Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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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.
Comments
Holy knee-jerk, Batman!
Yes they are after the emblems, yes this is a HUGE oversight gate keeping endgame grafted gear on one POI mob that is not lootable by higher levels.
But here we are. Its not intended, mobs are supposed to be higher level the higher level the node is, When player stalls are entered in game people would also have a diffrent avenue to use beside this grief. There are many systems not in game yet that fixes these issues.
The answer isnt PVE server.
its not going to happen, the game is PVX, its not for everybody, and thats ok.
this is a bad way to fix a problem, they just need to fix aggro and leashing, mobs shouldnt be aggroing onto new targets after being pulled unless said new person actually hits them, yea when they train mobs you are usually aoeing but they should just make the person pull get a butt ton of threat.
they already grant a 5-10% dmg modifier to the loot rights on initial tag so just make that initial person pulling gain a bunch of threat relative to their hp . would solve random damage pulling mobs off the intended target
Rather thoughtless reaction, the issue of training mobs onto people will still happen, and is indeed the PRIMARY means of griefing others in a PvE game. You would actually see more of this behavior on a PvE server.
Indeed it is.
I'm surprised how few people seem to have worked out how to prevent this, or how to turn it around on the character trying to train mobs on to others.
Players have tried. I was in a group that tried. The level and gear difference just makes it futile. My groups have broken up and left with serious XP debt.
It got so bad that you cannot even find a Highwayman group any longer. No level appropriate player who's gone through this experience just avoids grouping there now.
It may be hopeful that this is only happening because of the level 25 cap and the barebones crafting resources. But this is probably something that doesn't just go away. This level of griefing in early alpha only points to more significant and heinous crimes in the future.
Something has to be done about it.
Ruinous.
As is expected.
What you could do instead:
1) Try and negotiate with them. On death, 25% of your mats are destroyed and 25% are dropped. This means these people will only get 25% of your mats, and you might not even drop what they are after, plus they risk destroying the ones that they do want. Agree to trade all of your mats that they are looking for in exchange for peace. If they think you will not give them the agreed quantity, agree not to loot any mobs and let them become freely lootable by anyone (if they see you looting, you will get a mob train). You are trying to level up right now after all, just write down their and their guilds' names and retaliate when you have the means for it.
2) Ask for help. Whisper any high level player you know. Call out for help in global chat. You will have lots of level 25 players thirsty for PvP in the area within seconds, myself included. Anyone who loots a player's corpse and flags will be as good as dead. This will evolve into fair, healthy PvP battles or force griefers to dissolve.
Mob trains have been a tool in all MMOs I've played. They are not going anywhere and I do believe there are legitimate uses for them (not this one, though). If you can't engage in direct combat, learn to use the tools you do have. Griefers learnt to use mob trains, now it's your turn.
Based on this response, I have to assume your attempt was based around PvP.
As has been said, training mobs like this is commonplace in the early stages of most PvE MMORPG's where you can't attack the other players. This should make it obvious that the means to deal with this situation are not PvP based, meaning your gear and level simply aren't factors.
This is absolutely a player skill issue - if you can't work out how to avoid being trained, then you deserve to be trained.
Completely abandon your group and just run. Using those skills in stamina, sprinting.
It kind of sucks seeing the group wipe and the only thing in your capacity to do is just run.
Ofc mob trains are in other mmo's ,but other mmo's arent dropping your loot as a result. The real issue is the higher level players using the mobs as tools to get your loot without any punishment i.e loophole the corruption system with trains of mobs, there isn't any risk for them its free easy loot. My main argument is to find a way to prevent higher level players griefing low levels without punishment. trains are gonna happen but they should'nt be a tool for high level players to take loot from low level players risk free
.....at least if they became corrupt for looting someone 10 levels below them they would have to think twice about it , if they could potentially lose gear themselves (becoming corrupt) this would make other high level players want to hunt these guys more also
No player is going to kill someone 10 levels above them. Which is why it ends up making the game a race for who levels first so they can lord over lower level players. Some of us may tough it out and deal but others will simply quit the game me personally i would like to see the game flourish and not just for the (degen no lifer gamer) but for everyone.
as level 15s you guys should skip the farmy part of gathering and go do something else, go find friends who are 25s to kill the trolls and gang up on them, pve grieding exists but nothing is stopping you people from killing the trolls
why is this so hard? i mean, people gotta lean how to be players and stop demanding that the company plays the game for them
There's an arithmetic truth to this. If someone leaves a node with completely empty bags and the specific intent of 'gathering' by looting ow pvp fields, they will always have a net positive material gain no matter how many times they are killed as a purple.
I tried giving you solutions to your problem but you didn't quote me on that. I will assume you read them, so please do if you didn't, so that you know how to avoid the situation you found yourself in while grinding - I will still assist you in PvP should you need it.
As for your proposed anti-griefing measure, if you make anyone become corrupt for looting someone who is X levels under them, you won't get an anti-griefing mechanism - you will get a very easily exploitable griefing mechanism in three simple steps:
1) Have your low level friends or alts die somewhere where only high level players are supposed to be.
2) Wait for someone with an area-appropriate level to loot them and unexpectedly become corrupt.
3) Freely kill the corrupt player.
Edit: PS. You do drop your loot from dying to mob trains in other MMOs (or you used to, at least). See Lineage 2.
This would'nt be a problem at all if the loot pile gave said player a prompt that they would become corrupt if they proceed to accept the loot, problem solved
P.S Never played Lineage , but yeah we don't have to be them either as the goal is to make something better !
This, by design, would have been factored for really early.
Some other stuff in the game, I can see how it was 'let's see how it shakes out and how best to use our behavioural incentives', but this one is just, as CROW3 said, a direct truth.
So unlike my usual 'benefit of the doubt' I think we have to assume this is intended, it's part of the Risk-Reward, Cooperation-Drama, Winners-Losers thing. But what we have not seen yet is whatever Intrepid's concept of Level Scaling/Syncing/whatever is, and on the Technical level we now have at least one example of a game that can define its zones in a complex enough way to do some of this.
Basically if PoIs have level clamp/scaling the way TL Dynamic Events do, then we can absolutely consider this a skill issue relative to what Ashes requires. Don't stand so close to the edge of the area/zone that someone outside it who isn't level-clamped, can bother you. The rest of it probably counts as 'fair game'.
Please no, as a 'PvE' player of many years, this is almost instantly abusable and nearly every implementation of this sort of thing has either been exploitably bad, or ineffective against the sort of person who has the skill to do this in the first place.
It also places massive, frustrating limitations on even open-world encounter design as described. I wouldn't ask that they put any time into figuring out how to do this. Level Scaling solves this way better than fiddly AI stuff, and Intrepid almost certainly has to implement the basic level of this anyway (for those unfamiliar, level scaling is not generally 'work' for Devs, in the way you might expect, it should just be emergent from their balance equations).
I have no opinion on whether or not level-clamped players should receive drops or exp at the optimal rates, that's a more 'real' and game dependent design question.
And just to clarify that suggestion, the mob actions I listed above would only work as long as the high lvl player is the first one in the aggro list. And as long as that player has the looting rights (i.e. over 50% dmg dealt) - the mob should drop barely anything for a 4+ lvls higher player and nothing at all for the 9+lvls one.
But wouldn't lvl scalling require separation of pvp and pve stats? And how would you then balance that against the ability of other players to bring in high lvl mobs into the fight?
I gueeeeess we have the corrupted state in the plan already, which separates your pvp and pve power in terms of stat dampening, so maybe Intrepid already have the tools for that part of the equation, but the pve side of the open world would still remain.
I would imagine leashing changes would help, but then wouldn't that just mean that OP's problem is somewhat gone then?
Why would it require that?
Level scaling affects players, not mobs?
This is how it works in FF11 and TL, with TL having the 'better' more simplified version (somewhat less balanced, but definitely more balanced than anything I expect from Ashes even at launch).
Sorry, I just don't follow but I'll give a very brief and underexplained example of how it works in TL so you can lmk where it loses you.
Dominion Blood Mushroom event in Sandworm Lair in TL has a 'level cap' of around '33'.
TL's stats are tuned/laid out cleanly in terms of how players experience them. Here are some of the caps for Blood Mushroom. This applies to all players within a specific area in Sandworm Lair. This area has a physical ceiling. The game applies a status effect that 'debuffs' you when you are in the area.
Defenses are capped at Level*50.
Accuracy and Evasion are capped at Level*10
Base stats (the ones you assign) are capped at Level number.
Some other derivative stats are capped according to a formula related to what levels of gear you're expected to have at that level (basically, high level blue gear)
Cooldown Speed Reduction and some other similar stats are capped at Level Number/2.
So if I, at level 50, went into Blood Mushroom fully geared like this:
Melee Defense 2400, Melee Hit Rate 687, Melee Evasion 1080, Wisdom 45, Mana Regen 480, Cooldown Speed Reduction 40% (this last one is a bit unrealistic).
Then the instant I enter the area my stats will become:
Melee Defense 1650, Melee Hit Rate 330, Melee Evasion 330, Wisdom 33, Mana Regen 450 (don't quote me on this one), Cooldown Speed Reduction 16.5%.
The main difference is - in those other games, people don't look to PvP to solve their problem.
I'm curious - why would you suggest Intrepid fix an issue that is 100% player skill based?
Basically, mobs have 4 states:
- Baseline
- Aggroed
- Leashed
- Dead
The original nominal state of a mob is 'baseline.' When a player aggroes a mob (actively by hitting it, or passively by getting close) the mob is 'aggroed' with a focus of the player. Any other player that hits the mob is registered, but the mob's focus can only be broken by some heavy redirect (such as a taunt or MASSIVE hit).
If the mob moves beyond x-yards from its baseline coordinates it enters a 'leashed' state with a return to baseline coordinate; any action taken against a mob in a leashed state is evaded. Once a mob returns to its original coordinate it heals to full and enters 'baseline' again.
Caveat:
- If the mob kills the focused player, and the player isn't in a group, the mob becomes 'leashed'
- If the mob kills the focused player, and the player IS in a group, the mob focus changes to the next alive player with the most amount of threat
'Dead' is dead - but any player with a registered hit on the mob has their own loot.
Yeah I'm being kinda selfish again, since I still don't want Ashes PvE to be WoW tier, but that's the direction, so honestly it wouldn't make sense to use the non-WoW style.
I don't feel like competing with all the old heads who will abuse this to rush to level 50, so as long as Intrepid can find some sane, non-exploit way around that, we good, I guess. It's just disappointing to have everything come down to this 'tier' of gameplay after all these years, y'know?
Totally fair point. It's also practical, not selfish - they'll need to figure out the mob scaling deal to keep Verra dangerous and not obsolete. It's not like there's another continent inhabited by Xin Dynasty polar bears on the horizon.
That said, if they don't deal with the broken-ness of elite mobs being pulled into lowbie groups level scaling may not matter. In 1987 parlance, 'there will be nobody left to go to the chopper.'
So locking down an entire location (ar even a part of it) just to bring it down to a certain lvl doesn't feel good to me.
And the question would still stand. Are there high lvl mobs near to that area? Can they be pulled into it? If yes - what happens?
What about pvp in the context of fights right on the edge of that location. If, say, the location is lvl20 and there's a lvl30 healer with lvl30 heal power right outside of that location. And there's a fight between his lvl30 mate and another lvl30 player. Then the mate goes into the lvl20 location, goes down in hp (I'd imagine it would keep his relative hp %, right), but the healer stays outside of that location and heals him with strong heals, after which the mate jumps back outside of the location, now with full hp. Is this kind of situation possible in TL?
Also, what about gear difference? Rn we have several sets of gear per gear stage (i.e. several power lvls of lvl10 gear). Would the gear power of higher lvl player get relatively decreased according to his own gear? If any player above that location's lvl are simply at the ceiling of player power, then how does that compare to someone of that location's lvl but not in best lvl-appropriate gear? What about rarity scaling within those sets?
How does cross-boarder pvp work. Would a high lvl player who kill an equalized high lvl player recieve corruption equal to what he would get were he to kill a lowbie? I'd imagine so, but then how obvious are the boarders of these locations, cause I definitely see hardcore PK baiting across them.
To me, all of this is super messy, while proper mob AI design is way more straitforward. And I honestly still don't understand how exactly would it be abused or how would it prevent good mob design.
I thiiiiink I've said it before on the forums, but I forget now. I find mob training real shitty. Especially the kind that we have in Ashes rn.
I'm all for "the victim used an aoe when they shouldn't have and they paid the price for it" kinds of situations, but rn mobs can reaggro on a fucking whim. I definitely hope/expect that to change. What the point in aggro lists and their manipulation if a mob can just randomly run towards someone who had nothing to do with it.