[Issue] Griefing

D3ATHSPARK

The forums already have a lot of talk about his toxic behavior. It's a serious problem that seems to be ignored, so I'm directing this towards Intrepid themselves.

If you guys do not take this seriously and actively perma ban these players, then you are sending a message that this behavior is okay. This will not only deplete your testers, but it will also be a reason why many never even bother playing Ashes again. Behavior of this type only comes from the most psychology-damaged individuals who take satisfaction in harming others. So saying you're okay with it sends the message that you want your players to suffer. Who would support developers like that?

This is by far the most rampant issue in Ashes. I have been unable to do many high end groups due to all these trolls. Every forge group created gets griefed making testing that dungeon nearly impossible. No one wants to have their time wasted, so action is needed. When these players are seen day after day after multiple people report them... it just makes Intrepid look really bad. We are a month into this test and the population has already dramatically dropped.

I want to help make this game great, but my time is valuable. I'm not going to waste it dealing with toxic players who are trying to prevent testing. There should be zero tolerance for this kind of behavior. If you don't remove these players you will be losing far more actual players instead.

The ball is in your court, and we are watching for a reaction.

SnowElf

I agree with you that this type of rampant behavior does not look well for intrepid, and it does feel as if our complaints have fallen on deaf ears, but I do believe that things will become better with time. It's going to take a village to really hammer it toward the studio that something needs to give, or a large chunk of the playerbase just will not find the game enjoyable at all, because there are people who are PVE centric and will not want to engage in anything PVP-wise, whatsoever. There's a time and place for PVE and PVP.

Something to keep in mind, Intrepid studios only stands at just under 200 employees currently. To put that into perspective, Blizzard holds a robust 13,000+ employees in the last few years on record. I like to consider this when looking at the overall picture of how long it will take for action to actually roll out.

If you have recording software such as OBS or otherwise, you can record your gameplay when testing out certain content and use that as evidence against players who commit to griefing. Intrepid is getting hundreds of tickets daily to weekly. Due to the low staff, it's going to take time for the wheels of justice to start moving.

Yes, it sucks that you have to use recording software to catch these foul players in the act, but I do believe that Intrepid will take action once they get to your ticket in due time.

Something to look forward to that I would suggest tuning into is Steven Sharif's interview with Pirate Software. I'm fairly confident that griefing will be addressed in this stream, as it's been an ongoing issue for some time now and the forums are packed full of griefing complaints by the playerbase. I've heard rumor of systems that are being worked on to deter players from griefing, such as unique mob aggro, but who knows.

The corruption system is still a work in progress, along with the blight system, though I honestly do not have much faith in these systems.

My one true hope is that Sharif eventually comes to the realization that you can still have PVP in a PVE-type server.

You can still make caravans an exciting PVP event even inside a PVE-only server, or even wars between nodes. But when players just randomly run up to you and CC the hell out of you and kite mobs onto you in hopes that it kills you to avoid ever going red, it's just a terrible experience.

In a two day time-span, I was attacked about a half a dozen times and had to dole out 3 tickets to Intrepid's support channel showing clear cases of mob griefing when engaging in Carphin content. Players will do anything out of greed to steal named mobs or resources from you, and it's a serious problem.

I think that Sharif's heart is in the right place when it comes to the corruption system, but it's a haphazard bandaid at best. If I were to be frank, I think it's actually a fucking terrible business model for pvp because it has only benefitted the perpetrator so far.

Another problem to remember is that doing anything solo-wise is a complete gamble in this game. Players love to run in packs because there is safety in numbers. If you're running through Verra alone, your chance of getting ganked seems to be much higher. Players have been rolling alts which they keep outside of guilds to also deflect any blame onto a guild for their heinous actions - which is why Pirate Software vocalized often about finding a way to work around this terrible behavior so that players cannot get away with these shady practices.

I've reluctantly have had to tell some friends to avoid even buying into the Alpha because I know that they'd have a terrible experience with it due to the PVP/griefing, as they're more PVE-centric folks. Its sucks, but it's the truth.

The only amendment to the corruption system that I can think about is that players should immediately go red when attacking other players who are not PVP-enabled. It's attempted murder and should be treated with harsh punishments. I'd hope players would think twice about mob griefing when they're immediately going red and at potential for losing gear.

In conclusion, I love PVE and also PVP, but I believe there is a time and place for everything. AoC has some of the worst PVP I've experienced in my 25+ years of gaming and players deserve more autonomy when playing a MMORPG. It's sad to watch as a major chunk of the gaming community turns away from a game with such awesome potential because they're incapable of escaping PVP and grief from degenerates and having their experience ruined by the actions of said degenerates.