Some general questions about the game

I just heard about this game last night and started digging into videos, etc. that are out there, and I'm trying hard to not be genuinely excited about this game (So many games fail to deliver things like this game offers, I played archeage for years, and loved it for the most part however the game was mismanaged and eventually went dead because of that). That being said, after digging through things, I have several questions and am wondering if someone who's tracked this all along could save me some time watching all the hour and a half long dev update videos (I've watched a few, don't get me wrong, they are fantastic, but yeah).

Most of my concerns surround the aspect of griefing. Too many open world sandboxes fail to address the fact that players will always find ways to get rewards from griefing as a playstyle. Don't get me wrong, I love my PvP, and even adopted a pirate my own faction playstyle for the longest time as the benefits were just too great in a few games, but being honest that exact playstyle was the downfall of those games as well.

Guild War System - multiple declarations at once?
- If guilds can declare war on every guild, what's to stop this from being a loophole from corruption system (declare war right before you want to gank to avoid corruption consequences)?

Corruption System:
I realize killing a green player will give corruption and make the corrupted player's life suck for a while. What if the corrupted player has a pocket healer healing them? Does a healer healing a corrupted player gain corruption as well? If not, this is a huge loophole.

I've heard there will be negative Consequences in a zone for players failing events that block resources, disable access to things, etc.
- What's to stop an disgruntled or "a-hole" guild from going around and purposely failing things to keep access to things disabled, for other players, etc.? Will there be an in-game system to deal with this (failing an event provides a lockout from other events, maybe?), or would this just simply be dealt with by admin interaction?
- Second question - is Intrepid the kind of company willing to deal with this sort of "use the game systems in a different way to grief" behavior with corrective action, or would they simply leave this sort of thing be saying something like "This is a sandbox MMO, and this is considered "Immersive Gameplay"."?

Crafting -
- Will high tier crafting require open world drops that can be controlled by a group of players (lock down, may as well get the raided gear because acquiring mats for the crafted gear is impossible for most not part of the guild in control)?

Couple Housing questions:
Freehold Housing
- Can these get destroyed by other players?
- What prevents these from going stale (someone with a great plot stops playing, is there abunch of abandoned houses taking up all the great plots)?
- When a node gets taken over and your hosue gets destroyed, Does the "template" put everything back at no cost, or do you have to build it all/pay for it all over again (are items destroyed)?
City/Node Housing
- What guarantees players who aren't friends with the mayer of a node getting a plot (Can't the mayer just tell all his friends when he's going to activate it so they can take up all the plots)?

Classes -
- How will you avoid the typical "You can play 64 classes, but only XYZ classes are VIABLE to play" issue many games with combination class systems face?

Customizations
- Any system in game to stamp player uploaded images on in game items (sails, canvases, flags, etc.)?

Apologies if this is the wrong format for the forums, just trying to find this info quickly. This game REALLY looks exciting, and I hope it is as great as it looks and gets managed well to survive for a long time!

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Comments

Noaani

Guild War system

There will be limitations in place, but we do not really know what they are.

It will not be possible for a guild to prevent access to any harvest, as the game world is too large and fast travel isn't really a thing. A guild may be able to cause trouble in a specific area, but players in that area could (should) get up and move to another area. Housing in Ashes will not be like housing in Archeage.

Crafting.

Yes, top end crafting will require raid dropped components, We do not yet know how easy it will be for guilds to monopolize this content.

Housing.

Your freehold can be destroyed for a short period after your node loses a siege. However, your node losing a siege will likely result in you wanting to move anyway.

What will prevent these going stale as you put it is possibly tax (there will be tax to pay, but we do not yet know enough about it to say for sure), but also the above mechanic when a node loses a siege.

The template you get is essentially a no-cost rebuild, as far as we know.

The mayor has no say over who is and is not a citizen of a node.

Classes

There is no plan to avoid this. Intrepid know players will have a meta, even if that meta isn't actually accurate. There is no point fighting it.

Customization.

There are plans for this, though we do not yet know what items.

Mowaby

Some of the questions you have would be answered in a shorter video.

https://youtu.be/1s82xJnx1EY

Bahusafoo

Some of the questions you have would be answered in a shorter video. https://youtu.be/1s82xJnx1EY

This is one thing where some of the questions came from. I did google and watch several dev videos and other independent videos before posting.

Noaani

Bahusafoo wrote: »

Some of the questions you have would be answered in a shorter video. https://youtu.be/1s82xJnx1EY

This is one thing where some of the questions came from. I did google and watch several dev videos and other independent videos before posting.

Honestly, asking questions here is probably the best way to get answers.

There are people here that are more than willing to give you the best answer they can, based on years of watching videos like the above, and paying attention to small details on specific systems being discussed over that time.

While watching videos and reading the wiki should always be the first point of call, there will always be questions. The questions you did ask made it fairly obvious you have put in some effort looking in to the aspects of the game that matter to you.

maouw

Hi @Bahusafoo
Welcome to the forums!

I'm not exactly sure why healing a corrupted player is broken? They're killing greens so they aren't taking any damage, and they're easier to kill with stat dampening. I don't know if the healer will gain corruption from healing a Red, but doing so while he is fighting will definitely flag the healer as purple so you can kill both of them.

If a guild decides to grief an area, it will trigger a guild war and have a lot of social consequences. I think it could be a healthy part of the game, but the Ashes team are more likely to consider how to tweak the system to allow the community to punish people who do scummy things.

Bahusafoo

maouw wrote: »

Hi @Bahusafoo
Welcome to the forums!

I'm not exactly sure why healing a corrupted player is broken? They're killing greens so they aren't taking any damage, and they're easier to kill with stat dampening. I don't know if the healer will gain corruption from healing a Red, but doing so while he is fighting will definitely flag the healer as purple so you can kill both of them.

Yeah healing them should be possible for sure, but a healer shouldn't be "scott free" while healing a corrupted player and should have consequence too (becoming corrupted as well and allowing green players to kill them without corrupting).

George_Black

The pocket healer will turn purple.
That means the pocket healer can be killed by nearby players without consequences

Kionashi

Bahusafoo wrote: »

Guild War System - multiple declarations at once?
- If guilds can declare war on every guild, what's to stop this from being a loophole from corruption system (declare war right before you want to gank to avoid corruption consequences)?

Your guild needs to pay a fee in order to start a guild war and if you start a guild war with everybody that means everybody will have access to the missions to "win the guild war" which will cost it to the guild so I don't see it as a way to circumvent the corruption system.

Bahusafoo wrote: »

Corruption System:
I realize killing a green player will give corruption and make the corrupted player's life suck for a while. What if the corrupted player has a pocket healer healing them? Does a healer healing a corrupted player gain corruption as well? If not, this is a huge loophole.

Im pretty sure healing a corrupted player will give you corruption too.

Bahusafoo wrote: »

I've heard there will be negative Consequences in a zone for players failing events that block resources, disable access to things, etc.
- What's to stop an disgruntled or "a-hole" guild from going around and purposely failing things to keep access to things disabled, for other players, etc.? Will there be an in-game system to deal with this (failing an event provides a lockout from other events, maybe?), or would this just simply be dealt with by admin interaction?
- Second question - is Intrepid the kind of company willing to deal with this sort of "use the game systems in a different way to grief" behavior with corrective action, or would they simply leave this sort of thing be saying something like "This is a sandbox MMO, and this is considered "Immersive Gameplay"."?

Maybe a group of disgruntled players can go to an event and fail it to lock the resource, but that would only affect the area, the same event would probabbly appear on other places too so maybe you wont get silver mines in that area,but other areas can still get the silver mines event.

Bahusafoo wrote: »

Crafting -
- Will high tier crafting require open world drops that can be controlled by a group of players (lock down, may as well get the raided gear because acquiring mats for the crafted gear is impossible for most not part of the guild in control)?
-

If a guild is monopolizing certain resource, that seems like an opportunity to unite other people to wipe that guild, that would be fun.

Bahusafoo wrote: »

Couple Housing questions:
Freehold Housing
- Can these get destroyed by other players?
- What prevents these from going stale (someone with a great plot stops playing, is there abunch of abandoned houses taking up all the great plots)?
- When a node gets taken over and your hosue gets destroyed, Does the "template" put everything back at no cost, or do you have to build it all/pay for it all over again (are items destroyed)?
City/Node Housing
- What guarantees players who aren't friends with the mayer of a node getting a plot (Can't the mayer just tell all his friends when he's going to activate it so they can take up all the plots)?

-Yes, your freehold can be destroyed if your node lose a siege, but you wont actually "lose" the freehold, you will only lose a percentage of your resources and will get a blueprint to place your freehold somewhere else.
-Freeholds pay taxes if someone stops playing they will eventually lose the plot of land.
-You get the template with no cost
-I guess is possible that the mayor's friends will give a heads up to his friend when oppening freehold slots, but a node is supposed to have hundreds of players, so I don't think that will be an issue.

Bahusafoo wrote: »

Classes -
- How will you avoid the typical "You can play 64 classes, but only XYZ classes are VIABLE to play" issue many games with combination class systems face?

Is kinda impossible to perfectly balance all 64 classes so there is no meta, but Im confident all classes would be viable, they might not be "the best" but they will get the job done. Also balancing patches aren't out of the equation if for some reason something is incredibly broken.

Bahusafoo wrote: »

Customizations
- Any system in game to stamp player uploaded images on in game items (sails, canvases, flags, etc.)?

Do you really want to sail the seas in search of adventure just to see and Ahegao ship fighting a Macho Man Randy Savage ship?...because I don't....

Warth

Guild Wars:

We don't know yet but it is widely assumed to very well be a possibility.

Corruption System:

Healing a corrupted player does not give you corruption. The healer will get flagged purple and can freely be killed by anybody attacking the corrupt player if they choose to do so.
Corruption is only awarded through dealing the last hit on a green player.
No, its not a loophole. Why would it be? Healing somebody isn't an inherently evil act, whether he is corrupted or not doesn't matter in that regard.

Events (Monster Sieges/Node Level Up Events

As far as we know so far, there is no real "fail conditions". Those players can simply not help if they choose to do so. They might also be able to inhibit the people trying to beat the boss by flagging themselves and attacking them.
I don't see where the notion comes from, that the Devs have to deal with this at all? Intrepid is within the mindset of players governing themselves, which i gladly share. You don't need Devs protecting you, you as a communiity need to man up and deal with the problem.
Question 2: Intrepid is indeed within the mindset of letting players govern themselves. If Guild A decides to stop players from killing the Event Boss, then they are free to do so.

Crafting:

yes, most of the high tier mats will be acquired through open world content. Can they lock it down? Yes, if the server community lets them.

Housing

Freeholds can get destroyed in an X-hour window after the Node the freehold belongs to gets destroyed through a siege. They can't get randomly attacked at any given time though.
Stale: Sieges will destroy nodes and the housing that belong to that node.
Stale 2: Node Atrophy will end up destroying nodes if people aren't consistently contributing to the survival of the node.
Stale 3: Taxes. The inactive player has to consistently pay taxes in order to keep his real estate. If he goes inactive and doesn't pay taxes, then he will lose the plot of land.
A. Static Node Housing isn't controlled by the mayor. You also overestimate the influence of a mayor. You should read up on that on the wiki. Static Housing will be there upon node level up, the Mayor isn't involved in that in any way. For apartements: The Mayor might decide, that an Apartement building is being built on Plot A, however the citizens bring the resource for said apartement building, so they decide when it gets finished in the end.

Classes

You can't. Some Classes will always be better than others in certain aspects. Everybody who thinks otherwise is delusional. The only thing they can do as developers, is consistently nerf those, that are excelling in too many aspects of the game to keep the field as narrow as possible.
Once they succeeded in doing that, they should make classes feel differently in terms of playstyle so people are happy to take the 1% dps hit in exchange for playing a class they enjoy more.

Customization

Yes, its planned at least.

@Bahusafoo feel free to ping me if any questions regarding my answers remain.

bloodprophet

You can find a lot of good answers here on the wiki or at ashes101.com
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/

Both are community run and the wiki has a lot of links the to source of where what was said.
Welcome to the show.

Bahusafoo

Warth wrote: »

[*] Healing a corrupted player does not give you corruption. The healer will get flagged purple and can freely be killed by anybody attacking the corrupt player if they choose to do so.
[*] Corruption is only awarded through dealing the last hit on a green player.
[*] No, its not a loophole. Why would it be? Healing somebody isn't an inherently evil act, whether he is corrupted or not doesn't matter in that regard.
[/list]

This is inherently broken. Healers can be healers for ganking crews, and of course they will rarely, if ever, be attacking at all. So this is basically saying healers can assist with corruption punished acts and not be punished with any of the consequences. If corrupted players do less damage/have less defense, etc. then healers healing them should corrupt as well, doing less healing and also having less defense, etc. as well as any other negative consequence of corruption. Just being able to be killed without corrupting isn't a big deal - no chance of gear loss, etc. like other classes basically. Why bar healers from the same consequences as anyone else? "Oh well, I'll just come back and wait for opportune moments to heal and give the corrupted player a better chance." I really hope this is wrong, or changed if it's true.

maouw

@Bahusafoo
There is nothing to heal when you assist a corrupted player killing non-combatants who are not fighting back. Nobody is losing HP except the non-combatant.

As soon as someone deals damage to the corrupted player, they have engaged in PvP battle, so healing the corrupted player automatically flags the healer for PvP too so they can be killed, have their gear damaged etc.

Warth

maouw wrote: »

@Bahusafoo
There is nothing to heal when you assist a corrupted player killing non-combatants who are not fighting back. Nobody is losing HP except the non-combatant.

As soon as someone deals damage to the corrupted player, they have engaged in PvP battle, so healing the corrupted player automatically flags the healer for PvP too so they can be killed, have their gear damaged etc.

this, thank you. I'm really not sure why the healer topic keeps coming up. feels like people are gravely misunderstanding the corruption system.

George_Black

Bahusafoo wrote: »

Warth wrote: »

[*] Healing a corrupted player does not give you corruption. The healer will get flagged purple and can freely be killed by anybody attacking the corrupt player if they choose to do so.
[*] Corruption is only awarded through dealing the last hit on a green player.
[*] No, its not a loophole. Why would it be? Healing somebody isn't an inherently evil act, whether he is corrupted or not doesn't matter in that regard.
[/list]

This is inherently broken. Healers can be healers for ganking crews, and of course they will rarely, if ever, be attacking at all. So this is basically saying healers can assist with corruption punished acts and not be punished with any of the consequences. If corrupted players do less damage/have less defense, etc. then healers healing them should corrupt as well, doing less healing and also having less defense, etc. as well as any other negative consequence of corruption. Just being able to be killed without corrupting isn't a big deal - no chance of gear loss, etc. like other classes basically. Why bar healers from the same consequences as anyone else? "Oh well, I'll just come back and wait for opportune moments to heal and give the corrupted player a better chance." I really hope this is wrong, or changed if it's true.

Works fine in other games.
Healers healing a PKer get killed by nearby players all the time.

And there will be no "ganging groups"
Nobody is stupid enough to roam red for too long and risk losing their gear.

George_Black

Ill take this opportunity to explain open world pvp, since I havent done in a while.

You have the option to hit any player you want in the world except for friends and guild members.
Doing so will turn you purple. If they player hits back he turns purple as well. If one of you dies the other starts turning green slowly.

If you attack and kill a nin vombatant player (green), you turn red and you gain some "corruption points" and 1 count of PK.
In order to become green again, you need to kill mobs or so some other activities to burn the corruption points.

If you died while having a few PK counts (in previous games more than 4), you would drop armor pieces, jewelry pieces, sometimes weapons that you had equiped. Also you would drop inv items, gear included.

The more PK you have, the higher the corruption points you'd get per new kill.
Killing a combatant wouldn't grand you a PK.

Steven mentioned that there will be activities for players to erase a bit of their PK count. A bit with every activity.

So dont worry about roaming red groups or pocket healers.
Asking for a healer to gain corruption for assisting a red player is too much.

The system works fine.

Bahusafoo

So only non-healer players are prone to gear loss for working in a group to grief other players (obviously healers will never be landing healing blows, we aren't DPS)? I know for sure now what class I will be playing. Me and one or two other healers will never turn red and get any of the "half effectiveness" debuffs, etc, so we'll be able to keep eachother up and that red players. 8 DPS @ 50% damage and 50% armor etc. still = 4 normal players, pair that with 2 or 3 healers that are completely left out of the lowered effectiveness mechanic and you are still a strong PK group.

People in other games blow up high end gear that was very hard to get all the time. I think people widely underestimate the lengths people will go to feel the rush of ruining others gameplay experience under the guise of "PvP".

maybe I am misunderstanding this or comparing it too closely to Archeage and other games with PK mechanics, but the systems in those games did NOT work, and the benefits of the PK your own faction playstyles greatly outweighed the consequences - look at the state of their player bases today to prove it.

Warth

@Bahusafoo
incorrect. Also DPS player aren't prone to lose gear when ganking in the group as long as they don't deal the last hit.

So you are afraid that you can't take out a group of corrupted player by yourself? Thinking that you should be able to take out a group with more than double your numbers seems like a weird notion to me.

Yes you compare it too closely to Archeage. Archeage's justice system was a joke. You seem to be very fixiated on bringing anecdotal evidence of games who didn't even have a remotely compareable system.

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