Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Let's Discuss AFK Content, Multi-accounting and Multi-clienting Pros and Cons
More accounts/alts you had, more money you could farm in ArcheAge.
More you stayed AFK, more money your workers would gather for you in Black Desert.
I believe that this is quite an unfair approach to let this happen, be a thing in the game. Because majority of the community either working and/or going to school during the day and they are not on their PCs, physically. And when you are not on your PC physically and mentally, not putting the effort, you shouldn't be able to make tons of money, you just shouldn't. Those who put the effort into the game should. Those who try to take down a world boss with their teammates, those who do their bests to escort the team caravan and protect it, those who fish, mine or gather solo etc...
There are also a lot of people who cant afford to multi-client. For example if you could run 5 more clients in ArcheAge you could deliver extra 5 to 40 trade packs and that is really good amount of money, unfair money, ridiculously earned money that takes the fun of competing away from the game.
Letting this two happen will also give players a huge shortcut towards the end-game. And easily reachable end-game will make a lot of people bored so quicklier than it should.
More you stayed AFK, more money your workers would gather for you in Black Desert.
I believe that this is quite an unfair approach to let this happen, be a thing in the game. Because majority of the community either working and/or going to school during the day and they are not on their PCs, physically. And when you are not on your PC physically and mentally, not putting the effort, you shouldn't be able to make tons of money, you just shouldn't. Those who put the effort into the game should. Those who try to take down a world boss with their teammates, those who do their bests to escort the team caravan and protect it, those who fish, mine or gather solo etc...
There are also a lot of people who cant afford to multi-client. For example if you could run 5 more clients in ArcheAge you could deliver extra 5 to 40 trade packs and that is really good amount of money, unfair money, ridiculously earned money that takes the fun of competing away from the game.
Letting this two happen will also give players a huge shortcut towards the end-game. And easily reachable end-game will make a lot of people bored so quicklier than it should.
0
Comments
Multiple accounts/characters also shouldn't be as much of an issue. Unlike in archeage, multiple characters is not going to give you more labor points or allow you to transport more stuff. You are only going to be defend your caravan with one of those characters. The only thing multiple characters allows you to do is specialize characters in different professions and be a little more self sufficient. You will still need others for protection. Even if you make everything yourself, you will probably not be time/money efficient. I think it's to early to fear altoholics. I'm sure they are thinking of this and we will be able to notice if this is an issue in alpha/beta.
AFKing or being logged in all the time is a system I HATED with BDO. I even have solar power and don't really care about how much electricity I use, but having to worry about being logged in all the time to make money was annoying and unnecessary.
Thing is if you make some skills or aspect of the game not enjoyable like harvesting in SWG people will macro shit and go AFK. They will not use the keyboard to do anything they will let their macro work. NOW if you do something like a player needs to level mining but make it so mining might spawn an ore elemental they the crafter needs to fight the crafter will not AFK mine.
Some people just have nothing else to do and if they found something they feel enthusiastic enough about to do something like that, let them.
It's like condeming people that for some reason have more time than others, it's life you will have to make due with what you have or change accordingly.
Other than that, I do hope we don't see too many afk activities, I rather have an engaging fishing game investing my time in it than letting my character fish afk through the night, just because I could earn some extra money or even worse, it's necessery for food I need.
I am against banning multi-clients and multi-accounts. First of all, they get more money. Second, what if my SO (or brother, or room-mate) wants to play the game as well? How will they tell that there are 2 people playing and talking in the same room, or one person using 2 PC?
Granted I'm not a PVPer, and I wasn't in love with the combat system. However, I enjoyed the world so much! Loved the atmosphere and the organic beauty of it. What I enjoyed most was just to hang around, going here and there, being amazed at the beautiful landscapes... I actually enjoyed to run with my trade pack on the road to increase my strengths, or to explore with my horse to level it up. Once I realize that it was more efficient to AFK level horses to breed them, and AFK fishing than actually, actively fish, or that my worker would do the job for me.... I slowly lost completely the feel of immersion and lost interest in the game. I went back to my usual ESO, WOW, FFXIV...
I really hope no AFK content will be added to the game. It doesn't make sense at all to build up a game with activities to accomplish to progress your character, and then have features implemented so the players can bypass this. What's the point of playing the game at all?
Immersion is important. Working your way toward a goal is part of what make a game fun and interesting. Botting and AFKing should not be encouraged.
One thing that could help is the fact that the Trade runs in this game are one of the main points of PvP as far as I know. So if you try to afk a trade run you should have a high chance of losing whatever it is you lose for failing a trade run. And the rewards for looting a caravan sound like the'll be pretty good promoting PvP over them.
[/quote]
That was rough in the beginning, but they recognized it and changed pretty early in 2015. It's been online=offline for ages now.
I don't see an issue with AFKing if there's a timer. Sometimes in games I queue up some crafts and go make dinner, come back and check on my progress. I'm still "playing the game" but I'm essentially AFK.
But what's an issue is people abusing a system by going AFK such as farming XP, labor points or simply just reserving a spot in the server because there's a queue to get in.
Easy fix is AFK timer, but still this has flaws. I agree the best fix is just not allowing a system that gives you any benefits by going AFK.
With Multi accounts I always feel like they destroy a big part of the need to trade with other players and make a good investment in to one specific proffesion. I have a experiance in other games where people having multiple accounts could fully self sustain all of their needs, which for a person like me, who dedicates all of his time in to one character, eliminates any possible chance to offer him something. Also it could set the price really low, meaning I would need to travel to another city, sounds fair, but if you think about it: Person who has multi accounts sells in city A for lowest price, which I can't compete with, because he can harvest with account 1, procces with acc. 2, and make the item with acc.3, whyle I can do one of these things at best quality, ok so I am forced to go and sell in another city, oh wait! He has his acc. 4 waiting in forest on the road, fully ready to take what is mine, eventualy selling it in city B and I am left without anything but going to a dungeon and letting mobs kill me.
I know a lot of people will not agree and it is allright, we are used to things go certain ways, but we need changes or we will stay unhappy with the genre we all want to see rise from Ashes....
1) you say AFK activities are unfair because some people work? ummm ... when you work couldn't you just AFK play like everyone else?
2) you think that a company should put in place mechanisms where multiple accounts are not available? ... umm... so they should actually not want people to use more accounts and thus lose the subscription money those extra accounts bring?
Granted I’m not a PVPer, and I wasn’t in love with the combat system. However, I enjoyed the world so much! Loved the atmosphere and the organic beauty of it. What I enjoyed most was just to hang around, going here and there, being amazed at the beautiful landscapes… I actually enjoyed to run with my trade pack on the road to increase my strengths, or to explore with my horse to level it up. Once I realize that it was more efficient to AFK level horses to breed them, and AFK fishing than actually, actively fish, or that my worker would do the job for me…. I slowly lost completely the feel of immersion and lost interest in the game. I went back to my usual ESO, WOW, FFXIV…
I really hope no AFK content will be added to the game. It doesn’t make sense at all to build up a game with activities to accomplish to progress your character, and then have features implemented so the players can bypass this. What’s the point of playing the game at all?
Immersion is important. Working your way toward a goal is part of what make a game fun and interesting. Botting and AFKing should not be encouraged.
[/quote]
there is actually not ONE thing in BDO that was more efficient to do AFK than it was to do actively
active players made more money fishing, trained their horses much faster, gathered way more rare mats than their worker farmers could
no offense of course, but active was a much more profitable gameplay mechanism in BDO than AFK, AFK just allowed you to add to your active moneymaking skills
one thing AoC could have is if their is any AFK skills that can be accomplished, it could be very limited AND not gain in skill xp
I'm not overly enthusiastic about AFK content. It makes the world "feel" more populated because more players are logged in, but it also makes it feel uninteractive. This is the problem I see with Black Desert Online. You have plenty of people just AFK doing things like training strength or fishing. It makes the area around towns seem more populated, yes, but it also makes it feel uninteractive.
When you factor in the fact that the world in Ashes of Creation is supposed to be dynamic and ever changing with the players in real time, I just don't see AFK content as something positive towards that philosophy.
I know that most players will have limited time playing, I really do, but it's hard to justify AFK in my opinion. Why should you be rewarded for not playing the game? Or why should someone be effectively punished because they can't AFK? It may seem like just having your computer turned on during the night is something everyone can easily do, but it's not like that for everyone.
I believe that if you put in the effort, you should be rewarded accordingly. There will always be people that have a lot of free time and progress fast, while others have work, school or other commitments. It's tempting for those of us with work, school and such to just leave the PC running and progress in the game. But is that what we really want for this game? A bunch of AFK-ers around towns? You might want this and that's perfectly fine. I have my opinions you have yours.
<strong> Multiple accounts & multi-logging </strong>
This part steps a bit into the other topic of AFK content. This is again something that has many pros and many cons. The most obvious part we have to look at is the fairness of dual logging. If you allow multi-logging, you will split the game into what I see as two categories. Those that can and those that can't benefit from this.
If you have a good PC and (preferably) dual monitors you can easily multi-logg and be effective on both accounts. You can have one gathering resources while the other processes them. Depending on how interactive crafting will be, you could probably craft gear while collecting resources for making more of them. This is obviously a great economical advantage. You'll also benefit from any daily quests, daily/weekly dungeons raids and so on.
If you however have a bad PC that can handle the game, but not two clients of it, then you'll automatically have a harder time of staying competitive in the game. You will gather less resources and create less sell-able product, therefore stay inferior in economical gain.
You can argue that those whom put effort into maintaining two accounts should be rewarded for doing so; but it's hard to ignore the fact that not everyone has the option to do this. Should you really be rewarded for being fortunate enough to afford a good set-up for multi-logging? Maybe you should, maybe you shouldn't. Again, this is just my opinion. You are free to have your own opinion on this.
1) you say AFK activities are unfair because some people work? ummm … when you work couldn’t you just AFK play like everyone else?
2) you think that a company should put in place mechanisms where multiple accounts are not available? … umm… so they should actually not want people to use more accounts and thus lose the subscription money those extra accounts bring?
[/quote]
Nah it's not because people work. It's because it makes no sense to farm gold or different in game resources by doing nothing but AFKing.
Multiple accounts should be available. But it shouldn't give people HUGE advantage over those who play with one account. Or you shouldn't be able to play on both of them at once. Even if you do, you shouldn't be able to make the double amount of money you compared to what you could do with a single account.
But I kinda like this discussion about AFK content in modern MMOs. I might follow this thread to see where this is going
On one hand I kind of like in rev that there are some things I can accomplish while afk. There's a "trade" quest that's 3 parts and each part is 10 minutes of literally just sitting there. It's kinda fun because it's sort of a social thing. You sit there, talk in nearby chat, and you meet some people. You also can just have some time to go take out the garbage, run to the bathroom, or he'll take a quick shower. Some times it's honestly nice.
On the other hand, I hate que crafting, processing, etc. That is something I feel should be an active event. There should be a mini game almost to it. Something that makes crafting/processing something more than just a time waster for profit. I feel the same way about auto pathing as well. Unless it's a flight path, you should have to actively be controlling your character. Auto pathing destroys immersion in my eyes.
I am against banning multi-clients and multi-accounts. First of all, they get more money. Second, what if my SO (or brother, or room-mate) wants to play the game as well? How will they tell that there are 2 people playing and talking in the same room, or one person using 2 PC?
[/quote]
IP address and Hardware id's set to each account. They can tell if you are on the same PC or not. Also, banning multi-accounting/multi-clienting would decrease amounts of botting/gold-selling.
Crafting skills : If you have the component, and the receipe then you can craft something.
Diplomacy : could be missions or request that are unlocked if you have the status of guild master or equivalent where you can post, Player Quests (could be gathering, protection, assault quests etc...)
Management: Being able to communicate, manage your guildies, your market stand or just your equipment while not being in front of the computer is a real boon as well.
For the multi-accounting. I think it is not a great thing to support. Multi-accounting can be used for selling accounts, having a buff bot, botting, or just plain cheat. Being self sufficient is a nice touch though, but we are playing a multiplayer game, we should engage with one another!
Of course, running multiple client is "okay-gray area" i guess. But not a lot of people have a super computer and the computer knowledge to create a virtualized gaming build.