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Unable To CC NonCombatants?! What Does It All Mean?!
Azherae
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
This doesn't QUITE clarify enough, @Vaknar, so if SOMEHOW you have just ONE more answer from Steven it would help, especially if y'all aren't planning to make a whole specific post about it (someone else surely will, might be me).
I just want to know if we can interpret this part EXACTLY AS WRITTEN.
Abilities with CC effects do not apply to non-combatants. The target of a cc ability must be flagged in order to suffer the CC effects. This prevents players from opening attacks that stun players during a pull for example.
I think the most reasonable way to interpret this is:
"If your ability does only CC, it cannot affect non-combatants. If it does damage and CC, it can do the damage but the CC will not function."
However I can see an interpretation that is:
"If your ability does only CC, it cannot affect non-combatants. If it does damage and CC, it will not do the damage and the CC will not function."
Which, to me, are very different things, and I feel it would be counterproductive to make a whole post just 'discussing which of them is more likely', so IF this is a decided factor, or even if 'it differs by ability', we might be able to have a much more productive conversation on it.
Thanks as always.
My. Interpretation is this - if ability has a CC effect, it just doesn't start to cast.
That could limit a LOT of the potential CC effect types in the game, and reduce the complexity of the game as a whole, if it was true.
It also wouldn't matter if there were such a thing as a ground template CC. If I augmented my Hallowed Ground to also slow enemies in the radius and explicitly cast it as 'Full flagged, hits all Greens it touches', I want it to slow them, but you also can't 'control whether or not I'm allowed to cast it' as easily.
Of your various interpretations, which do you feel would be best for Ashes of Creation and why? 🤔
So, to answer the quote.
I think it's best if the CC effect doesn't happen but the damage still does, and Intrepid can even clarify which CCs still work and which don't (there's already some implications about Hard and Soft CC).
I wouldn't like it to be 'by ability', I don't feel this would fit Ashes for multiple reasons related to both build viability and just general game understanding, especially if ANY ability can 'receive a CC augment' from ANY Secondary Archetype. This could also be very precisely curated, but I feel like 'blanket points of understanding' are better for games with great depth.
I personally don't like the approach at all, as noted in the other thread, I'd prefer something closer to Lucky Ghost's suggestion, but this IS quite a bit more code, and starts to get into the weeds. My own 'simulation tests' of a related system led to a lot more complexity than Ashes seems to want.
Therefore, within the realm of just 'should Damage+CC abilities get their damage part', I say 'let 'em'.
@Okeydoke brought up the very real problem of 'Green can fight Red without any CC happening'. I don't have a strong negative or positive opinion on this EXCEPT if Red loses access to entire potentially damaging abilities, or abilities that might do things like 'CC opponent while offering Mobility', in the case of another interpretation where you just can't target it.
But with a Hybrid Targeting system I don't expect it to come up, so yeah, my 'vote' is 'let the Damage rock, it's probably easy to turn off the CC aspect anyway'.
Sorry, my native language is Erlang.
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also, attacking first comes with a risk. you will damage the other guy first, bu tnow ur at risk of getting silenced or whatever and could lose the fight.
Even without considering that, it quickly becomes worse to balance for, and the last thing I want to see is the devs throwing their hands up and just saying "It's easier to put damage and CC on entirely separate abilities". I don't need a game that bland.
"Your CC doesn't work" might be an interesting penalty for corrupted players. "You can't do damage" starts to get pretty harsh.
Ok fair, but let's take it at face value that Intrepid, via Vaknar, cares at least a little about our opinions on this.
Since, if it was 'probably going to work like L2', they coulda just said that.
Which do you personally think is BETTER?
Examples of 'what exactly happens when you do these abilities in L2' would probably be helpful to all those people who aren't familiar. Your post, for example, isn't clear about if the Slow still happens. It could have happened because Slow is a 'Soft CC' and only 'Hard CC' didn't work on non-combatants, for example.
the slow would still happens.
i prefer it how i explained it. that way you can stop people trying to mob drop you, something you cant do in pve server/games. another thing the guy who made the video forgot to mention...
The purpose of the design is to give a huge advantage to those being attacked. The victims CAN TURN AROUND and CC, a true chance to turn the tables.
Im not even going in depth about how this design should make you think twice about going red, thinking that you will get away with it.
You see now how all the QQ about "losing to whoever attacks first in an about open world pvp" was uninformed.
Why should a CC ability deal dmg on a green? Use another attack ability ffs...
Further more, why would you purposely want to WASTE THE CD of a CC ability, knowingly that it wont CC?
Obviously non of that matters in "auto-flag" pvp zones, wars between guilds, red players.
Not much more to discuss. Time and again the decisions Steven makes highlight how solid the L2 systems were.
Ok @NiKr, depending on you as usual.
Depraved says 'Slow still works', but that might mean 'Damage+CC still works, both sides work'.
George says 'Shouldn't work, just like L2'.
Which of these is the case in L2?
If that's too binary a question, feel free to actually elaborate on it please.
We did elaborate.
Having said all that, there were a handful abilities in the whole game that could CC or slow etc etc a Green.
Not every character had access to them.
There were serious restrictions such as weapon requirements, very high cooldowns or available on only one class.
Great exceptions to the rule, that provided a true class/playstyle identity and uniqueness.
I tried looking at update patches but couldn't find anything concrete by just quickly skimming through the notes, but I'm fairly sure I remember that it was a big change in the game because a lot of people complained about a class that had Fake Death gathering a ton of mobs then stunning a green player and Fake Dying which moved all of mobs' agro onto the victim.
And just gnomes stunning players (they had the highest chance stuns iirc) who were fighting mobs, because in the early updates if you died to a mob you had a pretty high chance to drop gear.
This would also work against that ganker. If you see someone pulling trains of mobs, you just cast some soft CC onto them and the mobs will start to disperse. This would obviously have to be balanced against any potential locations that work off of train farming, but we don't know if that will even be the case.
And as for gatherer interactions, I'd like for the gathering process to get stopped if the gatherer receives >10%hp dmg while gathering. This way people can still try and prevent a gatherer from getting their desired resource, but there'll also be a timer of sorts on how many times they can do that.
So a Green would be immune to cc, but still be able to cc and attack and kill a Red while still staying green. Seems fair to me.
Also agree that CC that have damage cast at a green, apply the damage to the green but not the cc.
Seems fair. There are plenty of purple fish in the sea.
Steven's comment in the video was, "Abilities with CC effects do not apply to non-combatants." I take that as non combatants are completely immune to CC at all times.
Considering that non combatants remain non combatant when attacking a corrupted, and considering that somewhere between most and the vast majority of fights a corrupted player will be in will be against a non combatant, this means that a corrupted player can't use CC and can't use his full class kit in most fights he is engaged in.
George and Nikr seem like the resident Lineage experts, so I'm asking either of you two. Is this how it was In L2? Reds were restricted from using the most important tool in a pvp fight, cc?
I see both of you, or one of you at least, making a distinction between CCs that do damage vs CCs that don't do damage. But Steven's statement applies to CC period, all CC.
Btw another huge point for me in that Steven's comment was the "corruption takes way longer to grind off than it did in L2". To me that's a pretty big red flag and imo it's just a design flaw that got created purely to justify BHs' existence.
Now that will obviously have to be tested properly, but I can definitely see a potential turn of events where no one dares to PK people which leads to people not flagging up (cause why would they) which leads to uselessness of BHs. Definitely hope we'll see in alpha2 that there's a better way to design the BH system to avoid that situation.
Don’t be a murderhobo. 😉
And I'll try my best to push for that thin line in my feedback during testing.
You don't have to be a murderhobo. You kill one person, turn corrupted, you can no longer use CC in what will probably be the vast majority of combat scenarios you may find yourself in. Whether you're trying to kill even more people, whether you're just trying to get away, whether you're somewhere grinding the corruption off and get rolled up on by random greens. Greens attack you and you can't use what is probably the most important part of your class kit, CC. But the people attacking you can.
That is completely and utterly insane to me.
And I personally like it that way as long as grinding off corruption from one kill (<15 count) doesn't take more than 10 minutes.
Yeah I saw the quote that it will take "significantly longer" to grind off corruption than L2. Depending on context 10% could be significant. In another context, something isn't significant until it's a 50%+ swing. Who knows. I don't even really have a baseline because I don't know how long it took in L2.
Sounds like we're heading in the direction of what's effectively a pvp toggle, with actually going corrupt being so risky and damaging that you can't even use your own character's abilities. lol. Yeah I dunno man.
I watched the video. A lot of the typical anti open world pvp propaganda, lies and distortions. He did have some good points intermixed though. I liked his suggestion of the anti harassment meter or whatever you'd call it, that limits how often you can just repeatedly attack and poke at someone. If something like that is workable, I think it's definitely worthy of implementing.
Yep. We all will.
Just keep in mind, I’ll never see a red as a victim.
Was L2 the same as Ashes in that greens attacking a red remain non combatant?
Was there any kind of exception cut out, that if a green attacks a red, the red can actually still use all his abilities? As in, even though he's not the aggressor, the red will still get the extra murder count if he kills the green, but because the green attacked him, voila the red can actually play his class to it's full potential.
By definition they were always murderers. And the "village's people" were always free to punish the murderer. They were bulls that saw red and attacked it immediately, preferably in groups.
And this is mainly why most L2 players begin to counter-complain when they see someone criticize the system. A red player in L2 was a juicy soft bun of loot for anyone who was near his powerlvl. And even if you died to said red player while trying to kill him, you now knew that if you returned to him he'd still be red because he now got even more corruption.
But that kind of situation didn't stop genocidal maniacs from killing lowbies and/or just weaker people. Which is exactly why Steven added the stat dampening. It will prevent those maniacs from going on long rampages. And that's exactly why I'm against The punishment for murder is so high and makes your life such utter hell that it should only apply to murder.
As for the harassment part of repeated attacks, I personally see them as a potential necessity to make people socialize more and also a way to keep the harasser accountable (that is, if the victim is socializing). Outside of the obvious "just run away if they're harassing you" there's also the "ask for help" suggestion. If someone's hitting you, they're now flagged for 90s. If they're repeatedly hitting you - they're permaflagged. Any pvp player in the vicinity of a chat shout or a guild/node chat would be glad to come and pvp a dumbo who's harassing people. Same applies against Reds as well.
I've been on both the receiving and the giving end of a "there's a PK in this location" chat shout in L2. And I've come to help countless people due to said shout. I'm sure the same will happen in Ashes as well.
But with all that being said, I still think that there should be some leeway to allow people some amount of PKs (imo ~15) where they don't immediately go into pits of hell for trying to remove a person from a lucrative farming location.
How in God's name would you even get to ~15 kills, when after the first kill alone, you can no longer use CC in your fights. I guess it's not impossible, you could be a freakin giga god, but any given fight between two equally, or even unequally skilled players, one can use CC, the other can't...how many of those do you think you're going to win? You being the one that can't use any CC.
And we don't quite know if Steven meant that literally all CCs don't work against greens. It does seem that way from his wording, but I definitely hope they clear that particular mechanic in the upcoming dev stream.
And after 15 that grind-off time can increase exponentially, in case someone was trying to kill a ton of lowbies or just wasn't doing the Pk counter removal quest while PKing a lot.
First of all let's agree to some common ground. Going red will be like becoming a criminal. You are not supposed to be able to have a fair go against the world, which will come after you, especially if you are solo.
We shouldn't be discussing at all whether this is fair for reds. We have been telling people for so long that AoC is a PvX game and that going red won't be a frequent occurance.
Secondly, let's agree an attacker has the element of surprise to his favour, meaning that by the time the victim realizes what's going on, the victim will have lost HP.
The victim has the benefit to stun, selfheal, selfbuff, debuff the attacker. It is fair when it comes to PvP (not PK).
You can't have people stun their victims debuff them, lower their HP to near 0 and then expect any reasonable PvP in such a game. You can't have CC skills being used on non combatant players.
Now let's go back to the PKing and if you can kill multiple people without being able to CC them.
In L2 the assassin's could really kill 1-4 people by killing the first target in moments, then using hide, killing the second and then trying their best with the other two.
My gladiator had a selfbuff that made me nearly CC immune. They can't CC me I can't CC them, depending on how geared or skilled they are I could go Red and win in 1vX.
The Destroyer had a selbuff that would massively boost the ATK. People would drop like flies.
Mages and Archers could easily kill a few unsuspected melee targets, besides tanks and assassin's, before those unsuspected targets could get in range to fight back.
I also mentioned earlier that some classes, could land CC even on Green players, and some weapons would allow you to use stuns on Green players. And depending on the L2 expansion of the time, even archers could CC non combatans, and assassin's could bleed them.
Lastly, in a smallscale situation where one person starts PKing and the other side starts killing the red player, there are groupbuffs and healers involved. The healers that assist the Red player will turn purple, the other side will try to kill the healer, turning themselves purple, and so the red player can land CC, and the whole thing turns to PvP amongst purple players (combatants) with maybe one or two Red players.
No need for panic. As I have said many times "it works just fine". Too much panic over some lack of MMO experience by some guy on a video. That's all it is. People haven't played many open world pvp mmos. It's all about BGs and PvP zones or faction pvp. These are the rules they are used to. Anything new (or old) seems unthinkable.
In L2 a red player would drop gear upon death only if they had 4+ PKs while corrupted.
Everything is connected, well thought out, and works.