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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
I don't disagree - but there are many equally shitty things players do in PvP where the response is "get good". I'm sure mob aggro will be tweaked from where it is, but it is still predictable/calculatable who will be aggrod on and when.
While I haven't got it to work for threat in Ashes yet, it is worth pointing out that figuring out who will get aggro in a situation like this is something a combat tracker can help immensly in - working out what could be behind things that seem random really is the point of them.
To those people that don't know how these things work, there are two key points that matter in *most* games where this is possible. The first is that proximity pulling a mob in itself doesn't generate any hate. You are (in most games) technically on the mobs threat list with 0 hate.
The other thing to keep in mind is that (in most games) buffs generate hate. In some games, even just class passives generate hate.
I've not run any in depth experiments in Ashes - and won't without a fully working tracker - so there may well be some other factors at play here. However, these two facts are most likely what players need to know to prevent being trained on.
This is why the whole thing is a player skill issue - it is purely a matter of knowing the specifics of the game in question. Those that know the games mechanics better are in a better position than those that do not.
I simply kept alert and watched for any player running towards our group and if I saw someone coming, I refrained from casting anything that was aoe or would splinter off to other NPCs so that my damage stayed on the NPC we had targeted. If Blister or multiple 3 star mobs were following, I ran out of the area and came back after, this resulted in seconds lost, not even minutes. If the person only had a couple mobs on them, we killed them for xp.
People need to simply stay more alert and play defensively.
Mmh. Sounds like a solution to anyone?
I've had a mob that was chasing a low hp person (so they fought each other and that player was definitely above 0 hate) transfer onto me while I was just running by on a horse. To me that makes no god damn sense.
And I personally consider this shitty design if those buffs can aggro a mob that doesn't have the buffer (or their target) on its aggro list.
I'm completely fine if a person with 0 hate (the supposed abuser puller) gets buffed by a random dude (or any other positive effects) and then the mob reaggros onto that buffer. But this is also why I've been saying for years that I'm against any and all "outside of the party aoe positive effects". Or at the very least the passive auras and stuff like that should not apply to anyone outside of a party.
It's interesting to see what people find pride in.
You get em, tiger. You tell them scrubs.
I am not certain the point of your post?
The person you quoted simply gave some examples of how aggro works to help people understand how to avoid the issue brought up by the OP? They even stated that they agreed with the OP that training mobs on others is shitty?
This works a good 30% of the time with the pyros they seem to just proximity aggro. I can't count how many times myself and others have got 1 shot because the person with original aggro has left the area, none of us even using an ability.
Yup you didn't know you're are just supposed to surrender all your loot to the level 25, So they can completely gear out off the drops you gave up, and lord over you even more with his newly crafted gear from your materials lol
If you reacted after the person got far enough past you to lose the aggro, this is part of the issue. Now, if the person had the proximity aggro Noanni mentioned and didn't touch the mob, then yes, that is a little more difficult to control as the person dragging them only needs to get them close enough to you. If I were having this issue and could not handle it, I would think about trying to adjust my location to minimize this.
I am not suggesting that everyone can avoid every potential situation, I just agree with the posters that have stated that having knowledge of how aggro mechanics work in the game AND exercising heightened situational awareness protocol will go far in limiting deaths. As I stated, my group was a bunch of randoms and if the tank or others had their back turned from the area mobs were being dragged, I started calling out INC in party chat (takes 1 second) and others just followed suit and started doing the same.
Why are you going to highway hills as a corrupted red player?
Oh wait the surrendering all your loot, this was just over-exaggeration and drama for a point? 🤦♀️
if you have been following the post that comment was from the perspective of a player being griefed by a lvl 25 , it was suggested that you make a peace treaty by giving up all your drops to the high level.....
I read the entire thread, I guess I just did not pay attention to your stance to know this was sarcasm as it gets lost on this forum with so many fragile players complaining about any type of contact or death. Boss are too hard, NPCs too hard, PVP players should not be able to attack even if they go red for it, no one should be able to loot bodies, no loot should drop... yada yada yada.....
Oh wait! Was it sarcasm? 🤔🤣
In an attempt to add some productivity to our exchange, I see no reason to place a limit on levels when looting, even if the loss is from an NPC. Someone that loots now flags as a combatant which makes them fair game for anyone else around that wants to engage them for their behavior, including players their level. Now adding a longer timer for staying pvp flagged for looting any body, I would not be opposed to this.
I don't really want to get in to the specifics of how, but if buffs didn't generate hate to mobs that are active and in range, players like me will abuse the ever living fuck out of that.
This is in fact why most games are designed this way - content becomes trivial (in a literal sense) if it is not the case.
The way I have put this to people in the past is to say that every class if played to its fullest extent with complete disregard for hate should be able to pull hate from a tank - especially at the start of an encounter. If you don't have buffs generate threat, it is kind of like allowing a healer to pre-load heals before the pull without generating any threat, or DPS to load some DoT's pre-pull without generating hate. Clearly these things shouldn't happen, and the same applies to buffs. Since any player or group can join in on any encounter, that means any buff cast within range of an active mob should generate threat.
This really is the way it needs to be - and having a buff heavy class means it is even more important.
While these things combined do leave players in a position where they can be trained, games also give players ways to avoid that happening - so it really isn't a big deal.
He offered no insight nor examples nor anything constructive.
Repeated what was already majorily stated but added 'if you can't avoid it, you deserve it'.
What a joke
And as for buffs, what kind of buffs are we talking here? The "it lasts 1 second but is super strong" ones? Cause to me that's an issue with the buff design than the aggro design. But even then, this is only a solvable problem if those buffs can only be cast on melee archetypes, cause you'd still be able to use those buffs on ranged chars outside of the mob's aggro range and the mob would not react to the buff itself.
And obviously, any buff that lasts more than, say, 3 seconds could be easily cast outside of mob aggro range and the buffer would not generate any hate for it. And as I said above, the "preload" buffs would be the same, so if the buffer started casting their ability before the pull was made, but the ability effect took place after the pull - the buffer should get the hate.
But even with all of that being said, I'm still against moving mobs getting unprompted hate from players that are simply within the potential aggro range but have nothing to do with the person that's pulling the mob. And if the abuse you and Azherae refuse to tell me is something along the lines of "parties A and B are working together, but they are not raided up or in the same guild/alliance; tank from party A pulls a mob; party B fully buffs up with their best buffs before attacking the mob, generating 0 hate for having done so" - then I fail to see how this is considered a big abuse of the aggro system.
If it's just that kind of abuse - we simply disagree on the design then. But if it's something else that I'm still missing - please do tell me, because I still cannot come up with something so supposedly aggregious that normal people should suffer for it, cause this aggregious abuse requires a certain aggro system design.
Yeah, sorry, busy, Predecessor patch and similar.
Most of it boils down to that I guess. I'll give you the other part but note that I might continue to seem to 'refuse' to engage because, well... busy.
The issue is that almost all solutions of the type you offered just result in the MPK being done in the opposite way, pulling mobs away from a spot where you know people will need to rest, or where they normally have to worry but could skilfully control them, and holding them, then releasing them to leash back to arrive at the right time.
Sure you can 'see them coming', but there are too many factors related to this in games with Ashes' main flows and goals. If they wanna switch to the easymode, it probably suits their design direction, as noted. Similarly, since you don't see 'stuff that allows players to control the zone easily by having a high level tank or Healer do certain things', as a problem, so it is.
My expectation would be that you'd want to go into the details about how your suggestion fixes, or could be changed to fix, all the ways this has been abused over the years, but Noaani seems to be hungry so I doubt you're getting anything from his end, and I don't have the time to walk you through it to the point where we know which part of the design you're willing to give up, precisely.
That's why I 'yield'. Ashes is basically a PvP game at this point either way, so they might as well do whatever they want with the MPK protections.
I feel like this kind of move either requires a very specific design of mob respawn locations or some very clueless victims, who probably have never been to that particular location before and don't know that this exact spot has mobs respawning at it.
This also depends on the length of the leash and general mob behavoir.
I don't see the action itself as a problem, but I do think that it should be addressed in the aggro design as well. Off the top of my head, I'd say something like
- if a highbie was involved in the kill of a mob - the drop is cut according to the general rates for that highbie relative to the involvement of the high lvl player (this depends on hate generated by this player throught the mob's interaction with lowbie players)
- if an upartied highbie tank is aggroing the mob (while dealing no damage), while a group of proper-lvled people are fighting the mob - the highbie's hate gen is highly diminished and the any pre-generated aggro goes away within 1-2sec of the group's interaction with the mob
- any positive effect used by a highbie on a lowbie that's interacting with a mob burns away the entire mana pool of the high lvl player (maybe even puts a very strong regen debuff as well)
To expound on the first point a bit, the calcuation for drop rates should be similar to how xp reward is calculated when you have an uneven level distribution in your party, while taking into consideration the amount of hate gerenated.So smth like "if this player was in your party, xp would be cut in half. This player only generated 10% of hp-equivalent hate (this depends on the contribution calculations for different actions), so the drop rates would be decreased by 5%.
And about the third point. Hell, I'd love if that was the case for any non-mentor relationship in the game. We've already seen Intrepid's dislike towards powerleveling, so why not take it to its logical conclusion, while also preventing the abuse of "I'm a lvl50 healer, I overheal lowbies so that they don't get any loot for their mobs". And we also through mentor relationships under the party/guild/ally-mate umbrella, so having an unpartied highbie mentor with you would still cut down your rewards as if they were in a party.
And all of this stuff is already something that's being tracked by the game. We have the party levels tracking for rewards. We have cross-lvl tracking for corruption purposes. We have mob-to-player lvl difference tracking for rewards (kinda same as the party lvl tracking, but more generalized). So I think what I'm suggesting is just a few developmental steps away, if that.
Yeah, it wouldn't work wirh healers and DPS - that's the point. What I'm saying is that it also shouldn't work with buff classes,which is why buffs generate hate the way they do.
With a long duration buff, you can't just have it apply hate when it is applied, because the effect will last much longer.
Instead, it needs to generate a small amount of recurring hate - and that recurring hate needs to be applied to any active mob that the buffer could conceivably engage with (however, again, that range should be shorter than the proximity aggro range of mobs).
Short duration buffs (less than 6 - 8 seconds in most games) don't need to have this, because they are rarely going to be pre-cast. A shirt duration buff like that is usually (not ways, but usually) going to be used mid combat in terms of PvE (and PvP doesn't matter in this discussion).
This is also why some passive effects in some games generate this recurring hate - especially if it is a passive that can benefit other players.
It's all good to say you don't like it being this way, but in 20+ years, no MMORPG developer has come up with a better method for the particulars in question (a game with a buff heavy class and an attempt at reasonably PvE), at least not one that isn't immediately exploitable.
So, as an example, smth like this
I'm against option 1 and for option 2.
If you have a game with option 2, I will exploit the living shit out of it to make PvE trivial. That is literally the thing that needs to be avoided - not as a perference, or a thing that would be good to see, but as a "this option breaks the game" kind of situation.
MMO developers as a collective know this, and that is why games with actually decent buffs haven't had option 2 for a few decades.
What some games do to get around what a few unskilled players in this thread are calling an issue though, is they don't have classes that are based on buffing.
So, your options are as follows;
Have classes based on buffing, where PvE content is literally trivial,
Have classes based on buffing, but where training is possible,
Don't have classes based on buffing.
There isn't a currently known fourth option.
People looking at this and thinking the first option is the actual best should obviously be ignored. People looking at this and thinking the third option is the best probably work for Blizzard.
That leaves the second option - and if you look at training as a feature of a game rather than a side effect of a requirement to make other things work, then this is by far the preferable option.
I mean, if Intrepid added a groupwide feign death ability, that would be a low/no skill means of dealing with mob training. I'm not a fan of this as I am all about player skill being the best option, but it is one way Intrepid could go.
That said, as I said earlier, there will still be some work done on threat - it is clearly not where it should be, but is in a reasonable state for this early in testing (ie, tanking actually works - which isn't even a given in some games beta tests, let alone alpha).
Yeah man some of these responses are wild. If this is the kind of toxic environment you can expect from this game then this game is not going to last.
Some of these guys act like it's a level 25 persons god given right to be able to hose lower level players with impunity.
I think most people are simply being realistic in pointing out that this is an issue in every game that has pvp and to take some accountability in doing what you can to avoid it, even providing ways to avoid death.
Everyone has the option to group up and flag and kill the 25, make a callout for higher levels to help with the griefer ect. The victim mentality simply does not work in any pvp or pvx game
Any properly difficult stuff will have to be in instanced dungeons where only raided/partied people will be and what I'm suggesting would not even be a thing there.
And if a group's singular buffed salvo can impact a mob in such a meaningful way that this is considered an exploit - we have much bigger problems in the game.
Not in this game you don't. The difference between levels in this game stat wise is like the difference between heaven and earth. In the situation described in this thread the level 25 can defeat his group single handedly.
No, that is not the exploit I am talking about.
That is a situation to be avoided (the bard in your scenario will never need to worry about pulling aggro, which is not good), but it is not the exploit. I'm obviously not willing to get in to what the exploit itself is here, as since it isn't the kind of exploit that will get you banned (it cant, as it would be intentionally designed in to the game if it exists), I absolutely plan on using it if it is in the game.
As to why I'd be worried about something like this even if the PvE content isn't going to be what I would consider challenging - players attempting it should still be on an even footing - this exploit guarantees that this won't be the case.
The thing with players abusing unintended gameplay to grief others and gain something.. I dunno what to think of this. People paid 120€ for phase1 or maybe even more if they're a supporter before that, and they log in, pull a group of mobs towards players and logout and repeat. Man so much for being a tester in a video game. Grief should happen in intended and not unintended ways. I have half a mind to start reporting such people. I had a case of lvl 8 pulling entire remnants onto us at level 16 and log off, he kept repeating it and I couldn't even fight him cuz he combat logged.
It's proximity based at the moment. If you pull a pack and pass a friendly, the pack will pull onto the friendly, at least the undamaged ones instead of all sharing one source of threat and following it they find the nearest hostile in case no DMG was done to them but they aggroed socially.
Is it unintended?
Steven has played MMORPG's where training was a thing. He has had mobs trained on to him in the past.
Most of the development team have experience in MMORPG's where mobs can be trained.
The fact that this would be possible would have long been known within Intrepid, so why assume it is unintended?
Fun fact, one of the few games that has had training be possible at release and has developed it out of the game is WoW.
I have to assume most posters here don't want a game that holds players hand as much as WoW does - so welcome to an MMORPG that doesn't hold your hand.
A simple fix to this would be to have the mobs ignore a group or persons five levels over them (Aggro% = 0 if over five levels and item drop chance = 0%. This would remedy the tag, and train trend growing with level 25s in lower areas. The next problem to solve would be the Alt-f4 champions of the same level that train mobs on top of you.
Going to be interesting seeing how they fix this issue.