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Alpha Two testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about Phase II and Phase III 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.
Comments
The PvP insentives of games like AoC are that you can disrupt an enemy players/guilds progression.
Another is the control of territory and the benefits this brings(castles and out-of-node guildhalls).
Finally the very fact that you can kill an enemy group that is raiding and steal their boss and loot, is more rewarding that a match victory that awards you some PvP points for the PvP shop. (Or caravan or ship).
By adding rewards and BG progress for PvP, you dilute open world.
In this arena, the best players of every class(30 classes) would be declared heroes of their class, with hero weapons, hero abilities, hero shop (very useful items) and a few more.
Only 30 players out of 10k per server.
Next month, the trial begins again.
These are meaningful PvP rewards.
Not PvP progression.
It has raids, but they are only kind of ok compared to other games.
However, that isn't what my comment was about.
In WoW, if you kill someone in PvP, they just respawning and carry on with their day. In PvE, you hit your head against a mob until it dies. When you get a 'thing', that thing is yours, and no one can do anything about it.
It is all meaningless.
In Ashes, you can bang your head against a mob, get that same 'thing', but you could then lose it to someone later on. In Ashes, it you kill someone in PvP, you may walk away with hours of work they have put in to the game.
This content has meaning.
And we haven't even got on to sieves or caravans yet.
Just because someone says something bad about a game you like, that doesn't mean they are wrong.
WoW as a game is shallow - that simple fact is why we have so many people here more than 2 years before this game is being released.
There are probably more pvp scenarios in the game that I dont know about
No it just makes the best raid guild ones that raid at 3am when the pests are sleeping
Raid boss respawn time and cooldown is the deciding factor there, and it wont be based on instanced content mentality.
I agree, there needs to be more rewards to PvP. Just because PvEers are forced to interact with PvP that doesn't discount the fact that PvP should get barely anything. PvPers are also forced to interact with PvE by the looks of it, which is fine.
If you can PvE for gear/recipes, why cant you PvP for gear/recipes too? You don't have to give everything to PvP, but some more incentive for people to play PvP in the long run should be welcomed in PvX game.
I don't see what the issue is for giving PvPers gear or recipes as a reward, either it comes down to the fact that PvEers want more players participating in PvE instead of PvP maybe? Because if someone doesn't get their sword, recipe or material from a dungeon and get it from PvP instead, how exactly does this effect crafters? (if drop rates can be made lower or similar)
PvP with barely no rewards would be the same as PvE with barely no rewards.
Talking about PvP progression and rewards for PvPrs, talking about more instanced dungeons for PvErs goes against that.
It's not rocket science.
Except it’s becoming very clear it’s not pvx but instead pvp with sprinkles
A few points to note here -
1. The PvP flagging system is not in effect for caravans. It's considered a PvP event and all participants, including defenders, are considered as having opted-in to PvP. Same with sieges, guild wars, and other such PvP events. Nobody goes red for PvPing during these events.
2. For the death in general, everyone accrues XP debt and other penalties upon death. In fact a purple PvP flagged combatant, has less death penalties than a green/non-combatant. They suffer 50% of the penalties that a green player would accrue. It's supposed to encourage consensual PvP.
Here are those details and obviously a red/corrupted player suffers more penalties, but for the sake of this discussion I didn't feel it relevant to paste that bit:
So if you want to run around as a green/non-combatant in order to feel safer, just know that the trade off (again, this game is all about risk vs reward) for being less likely to be attacked is that you suffer twice the death penalties (that includes XP debt) of a combatant.
By cherrypicking what you like to hear from Steven's statement concerning PvX you might have overlooked what this game is actually advertised to be.
If I were to describe it to someone completely unfamiliar I'd suggest to think of this game as the MMO version of a civilisation builder, with PvP as a late game feature to break up the established order.
In that sense I would personally not expect PvP to be a complete progression path but merely a thing that happens occasionally and adds a general sense of danger to most activities.
The reason for that is the overarching feature of the game:
The node system which is basically emulating the growth of a civilisation by reacting to players doing PvE and gathering stuff.
This feature is so important to the game as a whole that it is literally the first thing getting described when you go on the wiki:
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Ashes_of_Creation
In the PvP section they also say the following:
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Ashes_of_Creation#PvP
The "catalyst for change", that is what PVP mostly is intended to be and this is a clear hint at sieges and nodes.
The other thing that gets mentioned is "butt heads" or "conflict".
That doesn't sound like something you can progress through, I'd call that a violent problem solving system.
If you read this you may also realize that they probably would even prefer to have no artificial Arena PvP system at all since it would not be a meaningful addition to the world building.
Since those artificial systems are mainly used for progression in PvP there is a clear problem with your suggestion and the devs vision for PvP.
I wouldn't say you cannot play this game as a PvP player, but the bigger piece of the cake is not PvP.
The primary focus is clearly on player driven world building, mainly by progressing in PvE and Gathering.
PvP is only an afterthought to protect or steal the progress made by those two systems.
It is very clear from the devs statements that PvP, PvE and Gathering are different systems which aren't supposed to be balanced out or completely negate each other.
As a result there is no point in comparing their rewards since they are not compareable to begin with:
How would you compare the value of a node conquering with a guy getting an item from a boss kill?
How would you compare the satisfaction from defending your grind spot to an invader with the profit a crafter has after a day of "work"?
There is some merit to PvP in this game, it's just not a progression path because it is not supposed to be one.
So why are players expected to participate in PvP content? If it doesn't give players any tangible rewards, people just won't do it. Especially people who loathe pvp.
Full loot on death is also a meaningful system, it's still bad.
"Meaning" isn't a magical property you can just stamp on something and it is good.
It also depends on an individual person's way of attributing value to something.
For example the Cutting Edge archievments in WOW are meaningfull because it is objective prove of the players accomplishments, since only a minority of the playerbase have them.
It is the accumulation of hundreds if not thousands of hours spend to get to that point and succeed.
In fact Cutting Edge archievments are so widely acknowledged that they will influence the value of your account if you were to sell it.
Yea, that will be "meaningful" about one time and if it happens all the time you will just stop because it will be pointless to do something if the chances are higher to loose than to win.
That's not exactly the best example to explain meaning, is it?
They aren't expected to do PvP, it just happens naturally because most content is not instanced.
Imagine you form a party to clear a dungeon and someone else has the same idea.
You probably meet in the dungeon and beat your skulls in until one party is tired of it and the remaining party can do the dungeon.
So basically keeping your farm spot is the most common PvP reward in those kind of PvX games.
Is this a troll post? You get plenty of tangible rewards for PvP. You get someone’s resources, you get someone away from whatever dungeon you’re contesting, you keep your node at metro level with all its functions, you destroy someone else’s node so yours can grow into its place, you potentially get someone’s gear.
Those all seem like some hefty rewards to me.
The whole issue OP has is that they have to rely on other players turning those material gains into gear.
U.S. East
It’s a great idea because this allows the PvPer to feel awarded for their achievements in PvP and allow them a way to get gear while still having to get materials from PvE to make the gear. That is a perfect balance.
Gear being directly dropped from PvP is not a good idea though because then you won’t need to do PvE content at all.
The Recipe to make gear is a perfect middle ground for PvP awards and definitely needs some more attention. I don’t want to do PvP if all I’m awarded with is gold sometimes. A real PvPer wants that one amazing item it took then weeks or months to grind that they can show off and own with. Give the PvPers that satisfaction and item to strive for.
You make no sense at all, people want incentives for PvP. Nothing to do with dark souls. You sound like a casual.
i played games where you would get pvp gear from arenas and then the pvpers will stop doing all other stuff.
in every game where you got yor gear from PVP it was the only thing you did because it was grind and it needs to be grind if thats what happens because PVE players need weeks too with raids/world bosses to get gear.
WOW: PVP player are bashing 24/7 in open world and doing arenas to get ranking points
AoC: i was 99% in siege world and was queued to arenas with my team to farm pvp rank
Aion: i 24/7 ganked players in the world for pvp points and played the dreadgion 3 times a day for more points.
in all 3 games i totally lost interest in any dungeons or world bosses because i didnt need it. it was total time waste to do even raids in age of conan or aion because the PVP gear got -10% pvp dmg etc.
so for me you should do PVP because you like it and you are having fun.
you shouldnt do PVP because you need weaphon xy or you Sukc because you dont have the 25% pvp dmg boost like the pvpers .....
If thats the case I will be happy, but I made this post so the devs know there needs to be a balance.
In other games with this system, the amount of materials you get from PvP from other players etc is so low that it's pointless. You spend 80% of your time in dungeons and raids so you can do what you like (pvp). This must not happened or we will risk lose 20% playerbase that are here for PvP.
No, if you die at all you will accrue experience debt. If you are a flagged combatant, you accrue the least possible amount of experience debt compared to players who die in any other context. You have this relationship exactly backwards.
I will just copy most of my post from the PVPers unite thread that is going right now,
You don't actually have to raid or craft or gather. Almost none of the gear in Ashes is bound, not even after equipping it. This means you can buy virtually everything if you have the coin. Caravans are one way to turn a profit through PVP. You may need a certain group of friends or guild to make PVE avoidance work, but it does not look impossible to focus on PVP and exclude crafting along with a lot of PVE as well.
You could also look for a guild that wants to focus on the PVE elements of gathering, processing, and crafting but also would like a group of players focused on protecting the caravans. Such a group might support your crafting needs perfectly.
All that being said, if it just impossible for you to deal with the PVE elements then unfortunately as others have said, Ashes is not being created for everyone. The hardcore PVPer, the one that absolutely will not PVE is not catered to in Ashes (The PVEer that absolutely will not PVP is not being catered to either). Fortunately, everyone can grow and learn new things so perhaps many of these "hardcore" PVPers (or PVEers) can reform
I agree with this 100%. It blows my mind how many MMOs get this wrong. Either let everyone have the ability to get everything, or divide everything up to allow a market for each playstyle.
All I said was WoW has no meaningful content in it, and Ashes will. Proof of something that is meaningless doesn't give that thing meaning - even if that thing took many hours.
Fact is, all achievements are meaningless. They are put in to games in order to give players pretend goals to "achieve" to keep them playing longer. It is essentially a way for tgame designers to create "content" without actually creating content. If it happens all the time you should probably plan things out a bit better. You have no one to blame but yourself in that situation.
Defending yourself will be meaningful, and to your would be attacker, killing you would be meaningful.
In Ashes, the simple act of deciding whether to fight back a potential attacker or not has more meaning to it than basically every decision a player would ever make in WoW.
If I ignore PvP, I am an easy target for PvP players. As such, any progression I make while out PvE'ing is subject to be taken away from me in PvP.
That is a fairly large drawback to ignoring PvP.
The only drawback a PvP player has from ignoring PvE is that they don't get to pick and chose their progression. All you can do is take what others have done for themselves.
If they make a pvp progression system, the server will split in PVP/PVE/crafter/socials, as it is right now all PVPers/PVEers/crafters/socials will interact you have to play the whole game and this is fun.
Not like WOW where you raided a capital and 90% of players from capital were tagged non PVP and just jumped around meanwhile you were ruining their town, if somebody raids your town it makes sense to try to defend it even though you are not a PVPer .
Look at eso both pve and pvp have gear sets that lean towards one another. Although dropped PvE gear is generally used more often with crafted sets in both. But all 3 are totally equally viable. Crafted gear is used the most common because you can change and tailor its usefulness, but I dont raid a high end pve monster while being trash at pvp to expect a pve overpowered item to make up for being a trash pvp player.
Most pvp dropped gear fills niche playstyles like bombing, or reducing siege damage, running faster in stealth, etc...
This doesnt seem unreasonable to me. And its not like AoC core design philosophy prevents it. Crafted gear will still be the best since crafting is the main focus, but people should still have a way to at least have a general capability to gear up with something right?
I dont think you can maximize all proffesions for crafting like in ESO you are able to craft everything for yourself (not a good thing in retrospect) so as a new player you finally reach max level as a casual solo player whos mingled in pve and pvp, lets say you need gear or weapons you're basically dependent on people not refusing services or not selling basic gear at exorbitant prices.
Not that I think it would be common, but the type of content you enjoy shouldnt be unrewarding at all.
It doesnt even have to be good gear to be honest just something as a placeholder if crafted gear is exorbitant across the board or if the only good dropped gear is unatainable to the majority of the population