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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.
Pvp Event Death Penalties
Ludullu
Member, Alpha Two
I dunno how the hell I missed this during last year's May dev stream, but Pvp Event Death penalties got changed into "you just gain smaller XP debt", while all the other penalties remain.
I'm beginning to feel like a boiling frog at this point. The entire point of pvp events has always been "you die a fuckton, so the penalties are near non-existent". They were meant as the main source of pvp for people, because open world has Corruption and that will always decrease the pvp drastically.
I didn't pay enough attention to that stuff during P1 cause I was mainly playing solo and for any other situation just thought "oh, it's not fully implemented yet". But today I was discussing how shitty the current war design is and thanks to Legendary Neurotoxin pointing this change out to me, I've learned that I've been sitting in boiling water for almost a year now and have not noticed.
Now here's my question about this. WHY?! FOR WHAT REASON!? Who does this help?
Pvpers? Nope. Way less of a point in even attempting to participate in a war, cause a stronger force will not only roll over you, but also loot everything off of you as well. And if you're the stronger force - why in hell would your enemy not surrender immediately?
Pvers? Obviously no, for the same reason. And additionally, previously if you were in a war with a guild that was contesting a boss - any pvp happening between you two would've barely affected you. This change simply forces people into karmabombing and the counters to that action, which inevitably leads to the kind of toxicity we've seen on Vyra in P2.
Casuals in small guilds? Hell no.
Why was this change implemented? Hell, I'd even argue that zergs do not benefit from this, because they're fractured in small guilds, so either a stronger group of people gets to punish some 15th sub-guild of the zerg or the zerg just inevitably resorts to PKing their enemies, because (hopefully) they can't wardec the same guild from all of their sub-guilds. And if by some chance they can all wardec - again, why would the victim not immediately surrender instead of losing mats as soon as they exit a node (that's assuming that the dumbass "feature" of "you can be killed in a node for free" goes away).
How is this NOT an all-around worst situation for everyone involved?
I'm beginning to feel like a boiling frog at this point. The entire point of pvp events has always been "you die a fuckton, so the penalties are near non-existent". They were meant as the main source of pvp for people, because open world has Corruption and that will always decrease the pvp drastically.
I didn't pay enough attention to that stuff during P1 cause I was mainly playing solo and for any other situation just thought "oh, it's not fully implemented yet". But today I was discussing how shitty the current war design is and thanks to Legendary Neurotoxin pointing this change out to me, I've learned that I've been sitting in boiling water for almost a year now and have not noticed.
Now here's my question about this. WHY?! FOR WHAT REASON!? Who does this help?
Pvpers? Nope. Way less of a point in even attempting to participate in a war, cause a stronger force will not only roll over you, but also loot everything off of you as well. And if you're the stronger force - why in hell would your enemy not surrender immediately?
Pvers? Obviously no, for the same reason. And additionally, previously if you were in a war with a guild that was contesting a boss - any pvp happening between you two would've barely affected you. This change simply forces people into karmabombing and the counters to that action, which inevitably leads to the kind of toxicity we've seen on Vyra in P2.
Casuals in small guilds? Hell no.
Why was this change implemented? Hell, I'd even argue that zergs do not benefit from this, because they're fractured in small guilds, so either a stronger group of people gets to punish some 15th sub-guild of the zerg or the zerg just inevitably resorts to PKing their enemies, because (hopefully) they can't wardec the same guild from all of their sub-guilds. And if by some chance they can all wardec - again, why would the victim not immediately surrender instead of losing mats as soon as they exit a node (that's assuming that the dumbass "feature" of "you can be killed in a node for free" goes away).
How is this NOT an all-around worst situation for everyone involved?
3
Comments
PvP events in AoC feel kinda strange. I’m not sure how fast people will respawn, but I’d have the smaller group respawn faster and the bigger group slower. That would balance out how many people are alive on each side. If the smaller group avoids fights, the bigger group would slowly keep respawning until the full zerg forms up, and then they’d eventually overwhelm the smaller group. But I don’t remember seeing anything about this, so I’m not sure if Intrepid’s even thinking about it or what their plans are, we just have no idea about their line of thought on this.
The smaller group would only get zergged if they were avoiding fights or if they really can't even get a kill on the other group. If people still want debuffes and effects on the dead, then I would give them temporary debuffs for the duration of the event only.
Overall, I wasn’t a huge fan of the diplomacy and war systems in AoC, and that really made me lose confidence in the game. Like Steven said, "systems make games great," but honestly, aside from the node system, caravan system, and weather system, I’m not really impressed, to say the least. Sorry.
Objective-based PvP events accumulate lesser amounts of experience debt on death, but other penalties remain.[2][28] Previously it was stated that death penalties are not applied to event-based deaths.[29][12][30][31][32][33]
Yep, nothing like that so far.
For reference, the exact wording in the source that the wiki lists (number 28 from your quote above) says
So yeah, things don't quite line up with what was said in the source and what the wiki says.
Of course, most things are also flexible, but this would put us right back at 'you can declare war in order to freely kill 'enemy' players for their loot.
The only way I can see this making sense is if it is Intrepid's roundabout way of creating a larger gap between less invested, PvP-avoidant players, and 'the rest of the playerbase'.
Because at that point it would be 'those players should not join guilds'. And actually one can slightly see the reasoning. If guild storage becomes a thing, then having more players to gather and dump materials into the Guild Bank would be a 'balance issue' without the ability to contest those players.
This is, technically, imo a flaw in the Corruption system, actually, just percolating up through design as a tiny crack that becomes a fault line.
If you establish a 'perimeter' to PvP for an area and then deploy a bunch of lower level gatherers to be the ones to pick up all the items in that area, those gatherers never have to flag, even if the enemy sneaks through your defense line to kill them, Corruption follows. This ofc only applies if the 'sanctioned PvP event' in question is that sort of thing. This of course has a fix: https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/66521/pylons-as-player-driven-events
EDIT: had wrong link before
But that one becomes an issue in the other direction if 'placing the Pylon zone creates a sanctioned PvP area'.
It could also be a roundabout fix to an issue in Caravans if they count. If you gather a lot of things, then attack the nearest caravan and die with your Home Point set back in your node, but couldn't drop any items because you were flagged for 'Caravan PvP', then you've basically fast Traveled home with all your loot.
Just more design friction 'settling'. I'll hope that they can come out of it with a solution that suits their audience.
If we go by my usual 'Ashes should be the alternative/opposite of Throne and Liberty', then I'd apply this the way it is applied in Elite Dangerous, mostly (I don't think this parallel is going to make sense, but hey). Instead of making it so that the player drops items or has other penalties when they die, make it so that it keeps track of number of deaths and their items only drop when they don't get resurrected.
At least this way, a 'moving' or 'temporary' conflict event slightly encourages players to fight back and gives them a choice, and 'free bloodports' are negated. It's obviously not 'fun' to wait around for a Raise, as an ash pile, while a battle rages around you, just so you can keep your stuff, but this would still create the thing Steven usually wants.
If I can 'defend the area where my enemies have fallen' until their respawn timer runs out and they are forced to Home Point, I get the loot.
"For what...?"
"Just about everything, really."
Yeah this is definitely a reminder of 'how games end up being bad'. I often wonder if so-called 'bad games' just run out of money at this phase, where they're still not cohesive and are experimenting a bit, but don't have the capital remaining to polish whatever eventually turns out to be good.
At least we've been seeing more signs of a willingness to follow through or hand over to another studio, in the industry lately, though. The ecosystem is good. Intrepid doesn't have to answer to anyone but Steven, either, so they can just keep going.
The hard part is going to be the feedback filtering.
So, Intrepid, from our side, even if we miss some future survey or Discord thing... if my group was somehow still in your target audience, you can consider the feedback on this shift to be 'Mostly Negative' +7.
"For what...?"
"Just about everything, really."
Home point respawn is already an issue, as long as it's available even a few nodes away from your home. Losing 25% of your stuff is not all that much, if you die a flagged person far away from home. You save a ton of time while TPing to full safety.
I listened to the part linked by [2] up to the moment where he said there is a large audience of PvX players who are in-between the PvP and PvE extremes. [ from 33:12 to 43:48 ]
Steven's arguments feel valid.
I am glad he still sticks to his vision.
Do they now expect us to go completely matless into those events? But then wars become the most direct bullying tool there ever was, because now your enemy has a direct way to completely prevent you from going outside of the node, cause you risk losing whatever you might gain out there.
Tbh, considering this change was initially announced during the node wars stream, where people had to gather rocks which also dropped if you were killed by the enemy, I think Intrepid just don't know how to have BOTH that kind of mechanic for that particular war AND a dropless pvp event design.
I reaaaaally don't want to believe that, but right now it just comes off as lazy as fuck work. Can they not put differentiators for player identification in place, where a "war that's based on gatherables that can drop on death" indicator is different from "caravan run" and from "guild war for particular non-gatherable goals"?
Also, previously it was stated that we could kill each other endlessly in wars 24/7. People seemed to have been happy about that particular design
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/53205/24-7-pvp-during-guild-node-wars
Has that now changed as well? Cause I'd imagine people will be real fucking unhappy if they can be looted over and over and over again 24/7.
Again, to me this does not seem like sticking to his vision. Of course it's ultimately his vision cause he's still the director of the game, but that vision seems to have shifted somewhere along the line, and I would definitely love to hear a reason for that.
If you hate losing your stuff then the game might not be for you.
https://youtu.be/IBYXJ4bTOLk?t=2361
So now instead of controling that war cost based on proper levers of comparative power scaling, we just have "this strong guild declares war on this weak guild, it annihilates and steals all their loot and then it wins the war". Same goes for nodes and it's beyond worse for caravans, though I couuuuuld kinda understand caravans cause it's easier to tell people "well, just don't take any mats with you when you run a caravan".
We're simply getting waaay too close to something like Mortal Online in design imo. But we're also doing it in the dumbest way possible, cause anyone who can survive the game in general would still try their best to avoid wars. Which means way less pvp for the pvpers. Which means they need to find other avenues of attacking people. And that's exactly how we came to mob trains and other shit like that in the current Alpha.
Why not let people fight to their hearts content, while their reward is literally the war reward that they paid for from the start? Additionally, I still expect wars to be used to contest pve content, so that would also be the reward for paying for the war.
To me there's no damn logic in this change, which is why my mind just goes to "well, they came up with an idea for node wars and didn't wanna make a special case for it, so they just changed the entire pvp event death penalties design"
I need more punishment! Du brauchst mehr Strafen! Mehr Strafen! Too many players still have Hoffnung, und das muss eliminiert werden! You die? STRAFE!! You kill? STRAFE! You think you can escape das system? Nein, das ist Verboten!
Coloring outside die Linien? VERBRECHEN! You breathe in die falsche Richtung? STRAFE! You log into das spiel? KAPITALVERBRECHEN!
ES GIBT KEIN ENTKOMMEN! DU WIRST SPIELEN UND DU WIRST LEIDEN! DIE STRAFEN SIND ABSOLUT! KEIN SPAB! KEINE GNABE! NUR STRAFE! STRAFE FUR ALLE! STRAFE FUR IMMER! DIE MASCHINE VERLANGT ES! SPEIL ODER STIRB!
I'll check the other quote then, when I get a free few minutes.