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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.
Incentives for staying flagged in the Open World
bloodandthunder
Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Hello there!
I wanted to start a discussion on consensual open world pvp outside of the Caravan System. I have my own feelings towards Caravans, and while I think they need a lot of work, I think that system is great for driving the economy.
However, I have yet to intentionally flag myself for pvp and it's really bumming me out. So, I have a suggestion.
Give players who flag intentionally a boost to all experience gains they make while flagged. XP from leveling, to weapon skills, to gathering skills. Processing/Crafting should probably be left out for, hopefully, obvious reasons. No one wants to be ganked while their UI is full of crafting menus.
In the current Alpha, it sure does take a looooong time to grind. And, it should take this long in a nice safe environment. But what if I wanted to speed things up at the risk of losing some of my glint/materials? I really think that should be an option, and to me it doesn't seem like it would take that much to implement and this is the perfect environment to test it in to get player feedback. If an overwhelming majority of players hate it, just roll it back.
I really hope the dev team considers this, even though it was not in their original scope.
Would love to hear what the rest of the community thinks on this!
I wanted to start a discussion on consensual open world pvp outside of the Caravan System. I have my own feelings towards Caravans, and while I think they need a lot of work, I think that system is great for driving the economy.
However, I have yet to intentionally flag myself for pvp and it's really bumming me out. So, I have a suggestion.
Give players who flag intentionally a boost to all experience gains they make while flagged. XP from leveling, to weapon skills, to gathering skills. Processing/Crafting should probably be left out for, hopefully, obvious reasons. No one wants to be ganked while their UI is full of crafting menus.
In the current Alpha, it sure does take a looooong time to grind. And, it should take this long in a nice safe environment. But what if I wanted to speed things up at the risk of losing some of my glint/materials? I really think that should be an option, and to me it doesn't seem like it would take that much to implement and this is the perfect environment to test it in to get player feedback. If an overwhelming majority of players hate it, just roll it back.
I really hope the dev team considers this, even though it was not in their original scope.
Would love to hear what the rest of the community thinks on this!
2
Comments
General consensus of the group I speak for: Hate it.
General perspective of the community according to my data gathering (about 60:40): Hate it.
Why do you hate it?
Creates a situation where the stronger players who can take 'a risk' that isn't really a risk, get more value than those who can't afford to take that risk in an almost entirely passive manner, increasing the gap between the dominant players and those trying to catch up to them.
Such incentives destabilize these sorts of games in my experience, leading to communities/dynamics that cause the game to falter.
Might not be true/guaranteed, and there are already a lot of systems in Ashes that already do this, but I'm not really trying to claim 'this is a bad idea that would never work or be fun for anyone'. I hate it because I don't think it's fun, whether I'm on the 'winning' or the 'losing' side, it's not fun for me.
Oh, also, because you can't flag up on your guild/alliance members and possibly not even Citizens of the same Node, the whole thing gets even more complex and troublesome.
I think hate is a strong word for a system you do not have to partake in at all
But I do have to partake in it.
Because this game is incredibly competition based. Because I also like PvP. Because I don't want to have a game with the sort of play that this leads to.
My only choice would be to not play the game at that point. The idea that you can give players a bonus for something, with a penalty that literally only applies if they are weaker, and secondarily opens them up to be burst down by a roaming group of 8 players, and it not lead to a massive change in the way the game itself is played, is unreasonable.
You're suggesting that someone who flags up, gets to a higher level faster, making it even safer for them to be flagged up. And the only method to compete with that while weaker is to flag up, letting them kill you and set you back (you know this game has durability loss and exp debt, right?)
Creating a bigger gap between 'casuals' and 'hardcores', or any other labels you want to use, pretty much passively, is something I have really strong opinions about, so for me, no, 'hate' is not a strong word, I definitely really hate this suggestion.
The current mob restrictions and sources of XP gain aren’t a reflection of what’s intended at game launch, bloodandthunder.
Which some players have voiced loudly … probably incorrectly if you consider that leveling isn’t really a testing focus of Phase 2.
As someone who likes PvP, I still tend to agree with Azherae. There’s too much reward for the risk.
98% died to PvE
2% died to PvP
That’s the entirety of deaths of players from Alpha 2, wouldn’t mind the devs looking into a contested area where everyone is flagged in that area or something and there’s no corruption punishment and the rewards are more better so it’s that risk v reward.
And you wander why I'm excited for the Arena 😂
Until the sea is added, some parts of the land have the corresponding feature of flagging players.
Maybe some patches of land will remain permanently flagged if players like the feature.
I completely agree with this. Idk if you should get a bonus for flagging up but there definitely needs to be more incentives to PvP in the open would. People don’t do it now when we are playing on “temporary characters”.
I'm starting to seriously wish that AoC would just copy TL's solution to this because it's literally the best one we've probably had 'since ArcheAge' (I personally like TL's better but I can see how AA is the same or better for some).
The area is mostly the same, the content is mostly the same, for some period of time, if you want, you can fight for it.
So no one has a constant advantage of 'what they can get' (and in Ashes it's even better because you can just flag up anyway in the daytime), only an advantage of how much/when they can get it.
The players who want to see the area or do quests or whatever, just go when it's peaceful (and again, in Ashes, this still doesn't mean it is safe, I'm not suggesting removal of the overall flagging system) and people who are organized and want to PvP for gains 'know when that period is'.
They could make even more people happy this way because Corrupted players could hide there at night, knowing that there is no way for them to be attacked by 'greens', and therefore they can defend themselves, and not accrue more Corruption.
The question will be how to smoosh more players into population centers to increase ow pvp.
I’m honestly concerned about this because I feel like people will be too spread out. There will be too much space and no point to contend for resources or areas.
I've been yelling this from the rooftops of the forums for years now
Sounds like a good idea to me, would promote more open world PvP too
So your solution
- Wait for a node war
- Sign up for said war
- Hope you get selected, be there at certain time and place
- After 40ish mins its over after the bigger guilds with there guildies win
- Wait for next war?
This doesn’t sound like healthy PvP to me.
I bring up the Arena, people say “no OW” better
Well, it’s not even in this game atm
This would be the best time to test class v class action (we in Phase 2 now) before the next archtypes come in to play.
Give us dueling or something that doesn’t make you instantly corrupted after killing 1 person
^ no im not complaining, Im just saying what it currently is and maybe to add some (Optional PvP areas for us to battle in at least)
My vision was a corruption system which prevents clearing the corruption in the same area where it occurred.
And I was against the suggestion of an option to stay permanently purple as it is too similar to a PvP on-off flag.
To balance for those who want more safety or more danger, I think the node type should influence the corruption mechanics, reputation and hate lists, to offer much more safety in Divine nodes to divine citizens and to ensure that citizens of those nodes will get access to their content and resources rather than have to compete with military node citizens coming into the divine catacombs.
And the ocean, whatever drops, should not provide faster progression but just another way of playing. People spending time in the ocean would have to trade with those spending time on the land.
The only problem in the original design was that PvP-ers cannot level up doing PvP and for them it makes sense to cut somehow the amount of PvE activity.
Content in the military/martial nodes could involve more PvP while leveling but I would rather make it so that the PvP xp to happen only when the combat is against other citizens, with a greater bonus if is against other military node citizens, as this XP would impact the Node growth too. Ideally in a metro nation, the military nodes would play an important role for the nation, just like a team needs DDs.
there definitely doesn't have to be an XP bonus, but for a game that touts as being more PVP than PVE, I have yet to even PVP once and I am almost lvl 23 on my cleric. I got ganked during P1 while lvl 3 but that was patched and is not possible (unless i want it to be) now in P2.
Maybe the convo should be what sort of incentives would work within the confines of AoC. One interesting idea I just had would be to make Military nodes an always on PVP zone to fit the theme of determining who the mayor is by last man standing (unless that isn't the case? I know that's what the devs want but not actually sure that's in the test environment yet)
I think lawless zones are fine. Heck, I think that zones that are not a Village or higher should be lawless zones since there is no community to enforce the law yet. I doubt that will ever happen, though. But the devs could easily define starting zones and make those pve havens, but once we start branching out to external nodes like the desert or the tropics, they should be PVP zones unless a Non-Military Village is established.
Guild/node war prices for the pure pvp type should be set just right, so that the reward for winning is slightly less than what you paid for it, because those kinds of wars should be used to remove enemies from valuable farm spots during valuable times (i.e. boss spawns, weather/time of year triggers on special mob spawns, etc), instead of people just abusing the war to dunk on weaker players endlessly and/or abuse the system by warring their own alts for profit.
Node wars themselves should trigger special events at the warring nodes, so that people are more likely to go into enemy's territory to benefit from those events (this will obviously only matter later, when we have vassal systems).
There should be no "selection" for war. This is not a siege (though I still find the member limit for sieges dumb), so literally everyone in the guild/node membership would be at war.
The wars can only be resolved during prime time, but they work 24/7 and let you pvp 24/7, so people would use them as pure pvp pressure during off hours (I sure would, if I was a GL).
Wars shouldn't be finishable within 40 minutes, so winstates should be balanced accordingly.
War's should be completely forced, but either side should be able to surrender for a certain price, which is determined by factors like comparative guild power, repetitive wardeccing, success of either side in the current war, etc.
Wars should be joinable by allies, but with a defending side advantage, so they can add an ally first and the wardeccing guild can only add their ally if the defending side has already done so. Adding allies should have a cost for both the one who's adding and for the ally itself. That cost also depends on the stuff I mentioned above (and more of course).
For all other situations (i.e. unguilded/nodeless people or those in war cd), as I said in that quote, the corruption and BH balancing should also be way better than it is right now. Imo the harsh punishments should be about the repetitive PKing rather than just PKing and BHs should be about way more than just hunting down corrupted players. If the victim doesn't know whether their attacker has a higher PK count or not - they'd have to think whether fighting back is a better choice in the moment.
That also relies on better respawn locations (and not the current bs where you can come back within seconds), on fully designed mob AI, on more nodes in the game (cause they'd provide more potential wars) and obviously the game itself to be developed further than it currently is.
And I base this preference on my experience with L2, where a similarly-functioning design led to a ton of massive fights between a ton of people, all supported by politics and drama. Steven seems to have disliked L2's "war just means kill the enemy until someone decides to stop", so I'm trying to suggest a middle ground between that and what he's trying to go for (which is kinda what you described in that post).
care to explain?