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Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place five 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.
Pylons as "Player-Driven Events"
Ludullu
Member, Alpha Two
in Artisanship
Resources should be respawning within their general regions (i.e. willows by the rivers, minerals closer to mountains, etc) with a 2+-1h timer (could be faster, if testing shows that's better). Their rarity should be completely randomized on each respawn.
We should have 3 types of pylons. One is a research pylon, the other is quality and the third is quantity.
Research pylon should have a fairly big radius, fairly cheap cost, some reusability (either limited uses or fix requirements) and tell you how many resources will spawn in that radius within the next 3h. Could potentially show their rarity, if the pylon was of a high-enough quality.
The other 2 pylons would become "artisan events". Once a player places one of them down, other players in the vicinity would see it as an artisan event circle on their map for the duration of the pylon.
The quality pylon should immediately make the respawn of the resources longer (so they'd be rolling the +1h rng window, up to the max of 3h from their initial respawn start time), but their quality would be a step above whatever they would've been normally (could be more steps, depending on the quality of the pylon).
The quantity pylon would give the -1h roll and would obviously increase the quantity of gatherables. If a respawn was about to happen in, say, 2 minutes and the rng roll for the -1h hit that respawn with 58+min - the resource should immediately respawn.
The pylon durations themselves should be determined by their own crafting materials and they should also be their own things, rather than linked to the player's character (cause I fucking hated that my pylon would go away on relog/crash).
I think this could be a good way to not only let players control their gameplay more, but would also create a caravan-like artisan-based guild/group event, where you can get a high return on investment as long as you can defend it or use it at an opportune moment. And the research pylons would allow solo players to try and hunt down a good gatherable respawn w/o activating the event.
Imo this would be a much better approach to creating pvp around gatherables, rather than letting bots relogin next to a staticly-spawning resource. And to just clarify, imo this should not be a pvp zone, cause otherwise you'd completely cut off any and all solo players and even small groups of gatherers.
The gameplay would go down smth like this
What do yall think about this kind of design for Pylons and gathering gameplay related to them?
We should have 3 types of pylons. One is a research pylon, the other is quality and the third is quantity.
Research pylon should have a fairly big radius, fairly cheap cost, some reusability (either limited uses or fix requirements) and tell you how many resources will spawn in that radius within the next 3h. Could potentially show their rarity, if the pylon was of a high-enough quality.
The other 2 pylons would become "artisan events". Once a player places one of them down, other players in the vicinity would see it as an artisan event circle on their map for the duration of the pylon.
The quality pylon should immediately make the respawn of the resources longer (so they'd be rolling the +1h rng window, up to the max of 3h from their initial respawn start time), but their quality would be a step above whatever they would've been normally (could be more steps, depending on the quality of the pylon).
The quantity pylon would give the -1h roll and would obviously increase the quantity of gatherables. If a respawn was about to happen in, say, 2 minutes and the rng roll for the -1h hit that respawn with 58+min - the resource should immediately respawn.
The pylon durations themselves should be determined by their own crafting materials and they should also be their own things, rather than linked to the player's character (cause I fucking hated that my pylon would go away on relog/crash).
I think this could be a good way to not only let players control their gameplay more, but would also create a caravan-like artisan-based guild/group event, where you can get a high return on investment as long as you can defend it or use it at an opportune moment. And the research pylons would allow solo players to try and hunt down a good gatherable respawn w/o activating the event.
Imo this would be a much better approach to creating pvp around gatherables, rather than letting bots relogin next to a staticly-spawning resource. And to just clarify, imo this should not be a pvp zone, cause otherwise you'd completely cut off any and all solo players and even small groups of gatherers.
The gameplay would go down smth like this
- a gatherer comes up to a mountain
- uses a research pylon
- sees that there's gonna be a few rare minerals respawning within the next 3h
- gatherer asks their guild/friends how soon they can come to that spot to defend it from competition
- if they are close and/or if the research showed that the spawns will have high rarity - the gatherer uses the quantity pylon
- otherwise they could use quality, to get the best return on investment or if they just have enough time to wait
- everyone in the vicinity now knows that there's a potentially juicy gathering spot nearby and can react to that in an according manner
- Ashes gameplay ensues
What do yall think about this kind of design for Pylons and gathering gameplay related to them?
4
Comments
I'll detail my issues about it if you care about them, but note that it would get into 'offering solutions' territory.
"For what...?"
"Just about everything, really."
Well then before I write another essay I'll ask the two basic design questions I would ask.
1. What happens when two different groups deploy two different pylons?
2. How I mine for fish?
"For what...?"
"Just about everything, really."
And the same applies to the second point as well. You have waters in which you can fish. You setup a pylon in that area and within its radius you get the effect from the pylon.
The core mechanic would be pretty much exactly like the current events work. Whatever happens in the circle counts towards the event. Pylon creates that circle.
Ideaaaaally the "circle" would be able to adjust to the surroundings, so it'd be more about the sq area values rather than just a circle. For example, you come up to a mountain range and instead of getting a circle you'd get an area that hugs around the mountaint (smth like Red in this picture around a Grey mountain)
I'm not sure how easy it would be to code that and how well would it fit the respawn algorithms for minerals around rocky terrain. Maaaybe you could base it on the terrain type, so if you have "rock" that spawns minerals right under it (as it kinda does in A2 already) - the pylon would hug that rock until it runs out of area, where area could be determined by the quality of the pylon.
Same could apply to rivers/lakes/sea/forests, where pylons react to your surroundings, with water-based ones either adjusting to the shores or becoming a circle if they were used from a ship or water mount inside a big lake/sea (if we can fish from a mount). And forest/plants pylons would avoid "rock" and "water" terrain.
If that's doable - it'd be awesome!
Also, coming back to the first point, you'd be able to put another pylon if you used it on the other side of the mountain in the picture, as long as the area of the pylon isn't big enough to overlap the first pylon by going aroudn the entire mountain body.
Everything I'd have said depends entirely on an interpretation of Ashes' intended flows and PvP 'penalties' that we're no longer sure of, maybe.
And if you think it's fine that Pylons can't overlap, and that the playerbase will just have to deal with whatever exploits/frustrations that brings, then there's no 'issue' there either, it would just be a design thing I would 'disagree with', but wouldn't say 'this is a problem'.
Always a hard case when talking about game design stuff, knowing when 'I don't like this' isn't the same as 'this is bad', but I think in this case, 'non-overlapping Pylons' is 'I don't like this'.
"For what...?"
"Just about everything, really."
Or do you mean pylon type stacking? Cause I could definitely agree with that, considering that plants and trees usually have the same terrain spawn locations.
I'd say overlap was better if Ashes' systems for contesting areas were more... stable? I want to just say better, honestly. But then you'd have to solve 'what exactly happens with the respawn reduction', too.
The biggest problem I see with the non-overlapping Pylon is if you can benefit from placing it when you see others gathering up and then not actually contest the spot (for example, waiting for others to do the work of gathering and then attack them, in some way).
Which is exactly what I'd expect in Ashes specifically, if it was added. Before, I'd have said 'well too bad for them, this is a PvP event now, you have to get in there and grab the stuff or kill them to prevent them from grabbing it because you can't get drops off them.
And now...
"For what...?"
"Just about everything, really."
Let players contest it how they can w/o forced pvp. Of course pvp can still be the method of contest, but it's not the only/main one.
Think current mob farming events, but player-controlled and more competitive than purely cooperational.
This obviously still leaves the player looting side of things (as it fucking always does...), but that'd be a corruption balancing thing.
I have no problem with introducing group pvp content around resources, but it should not be centred around the current gathering loops. Add mines, lumbermills, lawless zones for competitive gathering pvp events.
Most of the open world gathering for me should be a solo content people can pick up when they have no group and to allow breathing space for less dominant / pvp oriented players.
Blown past falling sands…
Except I want a slightly more natural pvp, where solos still have a chance, because strong players might be too scared to risk their gear (PK alts notwithstanding). Having gatherables in lawless zones will always lead to high lvls of toxicity and the very snowballs you're complaining about.
And my suggestion kinda counters the timer shit, because the pylons I'm suggesting would introduce even more rng into the respawn timers of resources.
As for the boringness of waiting, imo that comes down to the guilds' willingness to fight over juicy loot. In L2 pvp for the boss would last for a long while, exactly because the respawn was within limits but not exactly known.
And I'm also ok with guild-based pvp for my suggestion because that's something your guild only does with another guild (maaybe a few others if we get that functionality), and not the entire damn server. And as I keep yelling off the rooftops, I want guild wars to have proper costs and rewards, while there's no death penalties outside of gear decay. The main goal should be the loot itself and the defense of its acquisition, not the stealing/destruction of it afterwards.