Glorious Alpha Two Testers!

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.

Lawless Areas Should Exist

ChaseChase Member, Alpha Two
edited April 15 in General Discussion
I have been playing since the beginning of alpha 2 phase 1 and have played a lot of hours. The main reason I wanted to make a post was to talk about the lawless areas in the game. Since the beginning when I started playing the main lawless areas have been the tropics and desert. I have had in my opinion the most fun and the best pvp in both of those areas and have had a lot of "end game" interactions around those areas specifically mob grind spots that ended up being the best in the game (tropics goblins/desert minotaurs/desert snakes). With the new update everything has changed and I'm worried about the future.

In the most recent update Djinna and Squall's End have been added as their own separate nodes down in the desert. What has come with that is the removal of the lawless area in the rest of the desert and has made it so the tropics are the only lawless area left. I have had a lot of fun experiences in the desert fighting over farm spots and overall think its worse for the game to have less and less lawless areas. I have been told that the overall plan is to have the ocean stay as the main lawless area on the map (not sure if true someone can correct me) with little other areas on land and I wanted to make this post to argue that some land areas on the map should stay lawless.

There are a lot of merits to having lawless area's in my opinion.
1. Farm spots that are in lawless should be great and incentivize fighting for, adds more pvp content and rewards group's that are able to win the spot with better experience. This also spreads leveling groups across the map so less areas are as crowded and leveling groups can decide to go to decent farm spots that aren't lawless versus really good experience farms but they are in lawless and more dangerous. This also will add more spice during leveling and more fun.
2. Not everyone wants to pvp in the ocean all the time. The ocean is definitely fun and I look forward to what else they add in the future but having a variety of pvp area's in my opinion is good for the game and breaks up the monotony.
3. Having more lawless area's spreads out the pvp, if there's only one central location then everyone will hang around there. Not all pvp needs to be large scale guild vs guild or 8 man vs 8 man, and having more lawless area's would help spread people around so you could potentially find more small scale fights.
4. There are times where I want to pvp but don't want to take the time to war declare on another guild or start up/find a caravan. Lawless zones are the perfect place to find small scale fights without needing to involve your guild or run a caravan.
5. They can have farm spot's stay lawless but keep the node's town safe. I'm not sure if its a technical limitation but let's say for the current Djinna node, you can keep the town itself and some area safe and then when you reach a certain distance away there should be a border where it turns lawless so certain POI's like the snake cave can be fought over. There's ways to make this better but overall I don't believe it should be this node is all lawless and this node is all safe, I'm sure we could find a good in between.

I'm worried once the Jundark area gets added and more nodes are added around the Turquoise sea even more lawless area will disappear. The most fun I have had in this game usually takes place in the Lawless area and I hope they stay and add more in the future, not just the ocean.

Comments

  • LudulluLudullu Member, Alpha Two
    Having lawless zones with best loot (otherwise there's no point in them) would go against the risk/reward design of the game. If a strong/zerg guild can just dominate a single location by killing anyone they see in it - they'll snowball into an even bigger/stronger guild and will then dominate all the pvp events and get to a point where others can't even touch them.

    Having those zones would also immediately completely remove any other type of player from that content, because, again, they'd simply be sniped by the hardcore players w/o any issues.

    Moving all of lawless pvp stuff into well-designed guild/node wars would be a much better approach, because the risks would go up (due to war declaration costs and potential loss consequences) and the reward would be appropriate (getting the content against a proper enemy and the win reward of the war itself).

    It would also make the whole situation an opt-in design, rather than a forced one, all while there's still the ability to just PK your opponent, if you believe that the loot is worth it. And I believe that PKing should also be properly rebalanced, where it's still a viable choice of action rather than a near-useless feature.

    Open seas will already fuck over way too many people, who might've otherwise been interested in that kind of content. I don't want even more people getting fucked over in even more locations.
  • yellowtwoyellowtwo Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    if PKing systems are rebalanced and not useless i think the game would feel fine in these situations

    I do think the game would benefit from having lawless areas in between the major regions - if the areas in which the riverlands and sandsquall or tropics remained lawless permanently, it would incentivize banditry and danger around those areas as people try to move materials etc.
  • VeeshanVeeshan Member, Alpha Two
    Personaly i think draakathbohr island should be lawless with 1-2 nodes on for pirate playstyle along with some useful mobs on that drop recipes and things for more naval aspect like shipcomponent recipes and so on.
    I wouldnt mind seeing Sujoma and Peligora islands be lawless aswell with some decent reason to farm there maybe a node or 2 aswell but it could be cool if the islands were out of reach of the law of the 2 main continents due to being seperated by water.
  • SmileGurneySmileGurney Member, Alpha Two
    edited April 15
    I personally love easily accessible lawless areas which hold some unique resources like the tropics and the old desert lawless. Especially in the desert you could pop in, gather some resources and find some consequence free pvp.
    My lungs taste the air of Time,
    Blown past falling sands…
  • VeeshanVeeshan Member, Alpha Two
    also get lawless area when nodes get destroyed sometime in the future where ur spose to be able to get loot that was in people banks
  • NoaaniNoaani Member, Intrepid Pack, Alpha Two
    @Chase

    I get your concern, but keep in mind, PvP content, along with most content in general, isn't implemented yet.

    Your main issue is that you currently have the most fun in the lawless areas. This is understandable in part, as the corruption system that reigns in the rest of the game simply isn't tuned to be fun right now - it is currently tuned to facilitate testing.

    When the game hits live (or even beta), and we have sieges fully implemented, wars working as they should, naval content in full, caravans balanced to be worthwhile and corruption better tuned, you are unlikely to miss lawless zones.

    And that is without taking in to account the objectively correct posts above mine.
  • NappyNappy Member, Alpha Two
    edited April 16
    Noaani wrote: »
    When the game hits live (or even beta), and we have sieges fully implemented, wars working as they should, naval content in full, caravans balanced to be worthwhile and corruption better tuned, you are unlikely to miss lawless zones.

    Neither of these systems you refer to are solo/small scale PvP which he is asking for. I agree with OP that it's concerning that lawless zones are being removed when nodes are being added to those spots. Large lawless zones was the reason I kept on playing.
  • LudulluLudullu Member, Alpha Two
    Nappy wrote: »
    Large lawless zones was the reason I kept on playing.
    That's a very bad reason to keep following the game, when from the start of A2 it was known that lawless areas are just a test of open sea gameplay and player behavior.

    Everyone who followed dev's statements knew that lawless zones would go away.
  • Chuck ZittoChuck Zitto Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    I have been having alot of good fights out in the tropics. They added in a crate peddler to sea hook to repair so now I permently live there. I am really hoping that when they do put in sea hook node that its only the mainland out to the shoreline and all the islands and pocket dungeons remain lawless zone. Add sport fishing like archeage so I can go steal peoples fish. Maybe even add in a few lawless nodes that have no guards and your always flagged there for the pirate characters because I really enjoy sea hook right now.
  • NoaaniNoaani Member, Intrepid Pack, Alpha Two
    Nappy wrote: »
    Noaani wrote: »
    When the game hits live (or even beta), and we have sieges fully implemented, wars working as they should, naval content in full, caravans balanced to be worthwhile and corruption better tuned, you are unlikely to miss lawless zones.

    Neither of these systems you refer to are solo/small scale PvP which he is asking for. I agree with OP that it's concerning that lawless zones are being removed when nodes are being added to those spots. Large lawless zones was the reason I kept on playing.

    While true, Ashes isn't about solo or small scale PvP.

    It is and has always been about large scale PvP.
Sign In or Register to comment.