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Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
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Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Mob training to take a spot IS NOT GRIEFING! Everyone should do it.
Xeeg
Member, Alpha Two
OK super controversial take here. Big discussions going around the town.
My take: Mob training on a team to take a spot is completely valid PVX gameplay.
Here is the logic.
You can ask a team to move from a spot nicely.
You can try and out dps/tag a team to win a spot.
You can PVP challenge a team to win a spot.
OR all else fails, you can mob train on em and win the spot.
But of course you may say, "Won't they just mob train on you back and everyone loses?" That's why people consider it griefing. It seems like a no win situation.
Here is where Ashes of Creation BRILLIANT game design comes to save the day. And most people are completely sleeping on this, because they just haven't thought through the whole situation in the context of the Ashes game design. Or haven't experienced it... Since I have, let me share with you the juicy and glorious details.
The longer an existing team sits in a spot the more glint and materials they accumulate. Also, the more equipment damage they build up, depending on how successful they have been there. The fresh team is fully repaired with no glint, nothing to lose, and a spot to win.
If the existing team wants to keep their spot, they need to be able to handle the mob train, or they need to get ready and jet ASAP or risk losing half the glint they made. Either way, if they are equally matched to the new team, whoever starts the process with the most equipment damage will have to repair first anyways. In many cases, it's in the existing teams best interest to leave, stash glint, repair, and then come back and try to retake the spot.
In this way, Ashes of Creation has a very strong method for allowing good spots in the game to cycle between teams. The longer your team is there, the more the advantage goes to the fresh team. THIS IS A GOOD THING. This means that you don't have just "let" some team sit in a great spot all day, you have the power to do something about it.
Not only that, but the chaos of trying to handle regular mob pulls, some PVP and mob trains is so much more fun than just sitting in one spot grinding the same stupid shit for hours on end. In fact, some of my favourite moments this phase have been successfully defending trains on us in high octane huge adrenaline rush gameplay. That buzz made the next few hours of grinding the spot pass in seconds. Felt soo good.
Lets have some fun game time here folks and loosen up a bit. Mob training is fun to use and fun to defend from successfully, which is why i want people to do it to me too. Adds a ton of spice to the otherwise monotonous gameplay.
My take: Mob training on a team to take a spot is completely valid PVX gameplay.
Here is the logic.
You can ask a team to move from a spot nicely.
You can try and out dps/tag a team to win a spot.
You can PVP challenge a team to win a spot.
OR all else fails, you can mob train on em and win the spot.
But of course you may say, "Won't they just mob train on you back and everyone loses?" That's why people consider it griefing. It seems like a no win situation.
Here is where Ashes of Creation BRILLIANT game design comes to save the day. And most people are completely sleeping on this, because they just haven't thought through the whole situation in the context of the Ashes game design. Or haven't experienced it... Since I have, let me share with you the juicy and glorious details.
The longer an existing team sits in a spot the more glint and materials they accumulate. Also, the more equipment damage they build up, depending on how successful they have been there. The fresh team is fully repaired with no glint, nothing to lose, and a spot to win.
If the existing team wants to keep their spot, they need to be able to handle the mob train, or they need to get ready and jet ASAP or risk losing half the glint they made. Either way, if they are equally matched to the new team, whoever starts the process with the most equipment damage will have to repair first anyways. In many cases, it's in the existing teams best interest to leave, stash glint, repair, and then come back and try to retake the spot.
In this way, Ashes of Creation has a very strong method for allowing good spots in the game to cycle between teams. The longer your team is there, the more the advantage goes to the fresh team. THIS IS A GOOD THING. This means that you don't have just "let" some team sit in a great spot all day, you have the power to do something about it.
Not only that, but the chaos of trying to handle regular mob pulls, some PVP and mob trains is so much more fun than just sitting in one spot grinding the same stupid shit for hours on end. In fact, some of my favourite moments this phase have been successfully defending trains on us in high octane huge adrenaline rush gameplay. That buzz made the next few hours of grinding the spot pass in seconds. Felt soo good.
Lets have some fun game time here folks and loosen up a bit. Mob training is fun to use and fun to defend from successfully, which is why i want people to do it to me too. Adds a ton of spice to the otherwise monotonous gameplay.
4
Comments
My argument is better... Just sayin'
"OR all else fails" ?
People might not even try the other options because mob training is more efficient.
The reason is more efficient is that grinding is somewhat boring if you do it with average mobs so teams move to the upper limit they can handle without interference. And often teams become small when a few people leave and wait for new players to join. So a new team comes, sees the tank pulling mobs carefully and they interfere and pull more than the healer can heal.
If the tank is unaware or very close to them holding agro, it dies. Because some mobs jump and hit you even when you ride on mount.
Certainly teams well synchronized with voice chat have an advantage and well used to this mechanic.
Random casuals joined together spontaneously to level up are just being pushed away by the game or pushed to join a guild and play with them. Most likely pushed away because those who already know the advantage to be in a pvp community will be in such a guild.
What means "non-group affiliated hate"?
I was running safely with many of them around me, knowing that they are focused either onto another player or busy running back.
I would not like to have a similar mechanic in AoC.
(i) You wait until the developers have finished more than one starting zone so the player population is more evenly distributed.
(ii) You wait until the developers have included more mob spawns in the Riverlands.
(iii) You wait until the developers have included other meaningful ways to progress the character aside from grinding the same mobs for hours.
(iv) You wait until the corruption system, etc. have been iterated enough that you actually fight other people than letting mobs do the dirty work for you. This isn't supposed to be Pokemon after all.
Training mobs is currently such a thing because the game doesn't provide enough content for the thousands of players crammed into one zone. This is a design issue that players can't solve anyway. My personal solution thus far: I don't play the Alpha because it isn't fun even if I were able to secure a mob spawn to grind it for hours and wait until there's a progression that respects my time. I'll just give it more time and check in back later.
Your the type of toxic player that should not be permitted to play with others. If this is Ashes design philosophy. I would rather leave the game.
Your face is gonna be in all the wanted's signs of all the nodes
No because he is not getting corrupted (red). Only flagged when he loots.
But the "wanted signs" is a great idea
As I understand it it's "the mob aggroing on people who were not on its hate list during the leashing".
Depending on the location's gameplay goal, the leashes could be super short, so no one can really just run past the mobs within the return times. Or the spot itself could generate hate for the mobs, so as soon as you step into it - the mob will have you on its list and will try hunting you. Or mob group aggro could account for longer leashing, where some of the mobs immediately start going back if the entire spot's group gets pulled from the spot.
There are several solutions - all of which are way more interesting than "this mob is just aggroing on literally everyone around them at all times".
Mob training is like the least efficient method man. Once you mob train and MOVE INTO the spot you mob trained, you are going to get trained on. It can take hours and repair trips and all sorts of mess before you finally get to grind. This is not the preferred method at all.
Well, considering your premise is based on the false assumption that the current state of ow pvp, corruption, and mob threat are the intended state - it’s not really an argument. You’re attempting to rationalize using broken aspects of the game (i.e. corruption & mob threat) to “win” a spot under specifically contrived circumstances so that it justifies that broken mechanic remaining broken under all circumstances. This is particularly unwelcome at a point where this bad-faith behavior is preventing good-faith testers from wanting to test.
IMO the design for taking a spot is: social negotiation (we can share, let’s join up, or we’re bigger go away or die), exploration (find a better spot), or ow pvp, governed by corruption. The goal of risk v. reward is to actually take those risks to gain the reward. As it stands, mob training involves very little risk and high reward to the trainer. It’s a clever recognition of brokeness, and taking advantage. In the context of Alpha, it’s bad faith testing. Mob training is (and has always been seen as) borderline if not explicit exploitation of a game system across mmos.
So, if anything, your rationalization is a compelling argument against mob training.
TLDR: Still no.
If players will not be able to train mobs to kill others then I want mobs to start moving by themselves unpredictably and kill players to drive players away.
The AI is really dumb as it is.
In most previous games that I've played that have had some form of mob training, it was like 33% chance of success for the mob trainer, 33% chance the mob trainer dies in the process, and 33% chance nothing happens and the mob trainer just looks like a dork. Made up estimates, but you get the drift, mob training wasn't guaranteed to work out for the trainer.
In Ashes' current state, there's mobs glitching, warping, teleporting. There's overtuned mobs like firestarters that can instantly delete people. In Steelbloom for instance, the map design is so tightly compact it just makes mob training very easy. It's hard for people to see that they're even being trained on. The camera angles still need a lot of work, you're constantly jammed up against a wall or some other claustrophobic terrain issue and your camera angles are just not ideal to see whats going on.
The spell effects. Good luck seeing shit with the ridiculously insane spell effects. The spell effects alone put a time limit on how long I can party grind before I start feeling negative, real life, physical effects. Truly ridiculous. Years of feed back not only hasn't gotten the spell effects toned down, they've instead toned up. You can't see shit.
The leashes are probably a bit too long. The random aggro needs work.
All of this makes a mob trainers job easier. And it's pretty abysmal in Ashes. It's too easy. This coming from someone that's only been on the receiving end of it a handful of times, and usually I don't die from it. So I can imagine the frustration from people that do. Oh and just to top it off, you can't kill the people that do it to you. The corruption system is way too punishing and at this point is just a meme. It's pretty much unused and will remain that way until Intrepid stop being afraid of their own designs and grab their balls and make the game they said they were going to make.
This is also my argument as to why this is actually a REALLY difficult method for taking a spot. Because it can be used against your team just as easily. In order to WIN the spot, your team needs to be better at dealing with the trains than the enemy team, straight up. There is alot of skill involved, and alot of patience/resilience for the team to not give up until they are the ones in the spot.
I've never once complained about dying to trained mobs in this game. I analyzed the situation with my team and assessed how we can handle the train better. Strategized about when to run and when to fight the train, or when to try and just not pull the agro, or CCing the trainer so hopefully the trained mobs kill them before leashing on us.
Instead of just getting mad at the game, we decided to figure out how to get good at it. We learned that if we are more coordinated, more resilient and more knowledgable, we can secure a spot.
We dont walk up to a spot and say "its full lets move on". No. We say "OK everyone its full, how many of you are ready to die and wipe for an hour or two before they give up and we win?" Not everyone is down for this, not because "it is too easy", but because it is really freaking hard.
MAKE SERVERS EVEN SMALLER AND FEWER! Make people farm out literally all of the mobs, so there's nothing to even train onto people
How meta… let’s train groups of players onto other groups of players and bask in the chaos.
The current build is mostly just for passing time over the holidays for those who enjoy such chaos, so even if we discuss this now as a whole, we'll just have to do it again when Phase 2 'actually starts'.
Ha! 🤣
Unless ai gets better so that mobs are dealing damage constantly to the training player, they get off pretty free when doing this as other players have two crappy choices. kill them and go red, or run from the mobs/kill the mobs and leave the area to avoid the train.
This will be fixed.
Those that pull, singly or in group will generate the hate and after contact is broken, if it can be broken with the new iteration, the mobs will simply move back or teleport back to their start points.
I feel the mobs should chase the pullers down until they or the mobs are dead. If it is a group and they disband then all get the same hate generation and will attract other mobs onto themselves until one side is dead. Kind of a self made punishment if grabbing a mob and running it by other players instead of fighting it or directing it away.
It is obtuse comments like the OP's that try to turn games like AshesofCreation into games like New World or eve online.
Yep, I suggested stuff like this a few years back. Mobs should have additional behavioral patterns for long leashing, both in solo mobs and especially in group mob behavior.
Problem isn't the training of the mobs.
Problem is the corruption design by way of retaliation.
That leads to more problems, the games designs are so interwoven you cannot change one thing in the game without changing many other things to accommodate that design.
People used to solo and team up with randoms don't typically coordinate to fight back.
Fighting back when leveling is somewhat complicated as the one which pulls the dangerous NPCs is a very high level and the one which loots is a different one waiting to see players die, to loot them and then runs away fast.
Eventually people will learn that guilds protect and will join them.
Maybe citizens should protect each-other too.
Be the stinky blue cheese that makes the kids hide in the bedroom.