Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
@Vaknar hope you saw this post!
What would you consider appropriate?
@Vaknar I hope the Intrepid team take in consideration that your Alpha 2 backers won't exactly represent "normal" player behaviour.
People that pay +250$ to test a game years before launch probably consist of dedicated players that tends to follow the rules.
Making all the decisions based on data gathered from your fans, instead of actual players might be an issue, we'll see.
There are many, many years of industry experience at Intrepid Studios. You can rest assured that things like this need not be worried about
To touch briefly back to the safe vs unsafe nodes... The current corruption system allows an ecosystem where players and guilds can contribute to the safety of a node where pk'ing is rare due to active hunting for pk's committing crimes in their nodes. There will be nodes that are assumed to be safe because local blue guilds provide extra protection to visitors and traders so their nodes are more prosperous. Just as well, there will be unsafe nodes where pk'ing happening more often because red guild raids are rampant and trade and the economy of the node suffer as a consequence. Risk vs reward.
Except I'm 99% sure that there won't be any "red guilds" in the game if the corruption is tuned to deter people from PKing as much as some people want. If even a solo player is afraid to PK someone then how can a guild support itself if their members are constantly hunted, are constantly at shitty pvp stats, and are somewhere at lvl20 pve power after they've removed their corruption? Oh, and their PK counts are through the roof so even a single kill will get them right back to that super low power lvl.
The goal isn't to deter PKing, it's to deter griefing. PKing someone a couple times and moving on isn't griefing. What you suggest leaves no risk for going out to gather resources or participate in PVE. In order for this game to be PVX there must be a balance of risks for both PvP and PvE when participating in either, and incorpating both together as much as possible.
I disagree, I think the majority (including myself) desires a corruption system where pk'ing and red guilds exist and grieving other players is actively deterred. This is a process of balancing and Intrepid has the right direction and principles atm. We will all have to wait and see the feedback of our community during alpha 2, beta, and even after release, and see how Intrepid plays with their corruption penalty gauges. I expect there will be gradual adjustments as new players join our community.
Agreed.
I am not proposing to remove the ability to pk or create a pk guild. For instance, this system provides a scenario where a guild may decide to hunt down "trespassers" in a node, where players who "assume ownership" to a node or a particular resource in a node take the risk to kill non-combatant players who are also taking the risk of being hunted by trying to gather the rare resource they're after.
The ultimate goal should deter from griefing and the system with appropriate deterrence should allow players the freedom to self-regulate by allowing instances of pk'ing, raids, and defense in nodes.
Putting it into numbers based on a 10k server, I'd say, about 90% of the player community will never take part in world PvP outside caravan raids, arenas, Guild vs Guild, and other instanced activities. If a player is within one of those PvP guilds that I assume will make less than 10% of the player community who has an interest in defending free resources for their own guild within a node, and deter other players from access, only a small number of those players should take the risk for going red and hunt down other players trespassing.
Any player should be able to kill another non-combatant player, but the system should strongly deter this at such a level that the player has a strong motive and the backing of a strong guild present within the node.
Otherwise, I'm not sure what exactly you're disagreeing with in that quote.
Yes, "a red guild" may have different definitions than the one you assume. It could be a pk guild coordinating with a regular guild, tasked with only deterring non-combatant players from gathering in a node. It could be a pirate guild protecting an island node and its surrounding sea, reserving all its resources for itself. It could also be the red guild you mentioned, attacking pretty much 99% of anyone they see, but I doubt they would survive long in a well-protected node. Eventually, they'd be pushed toward the edges of the map, and hunted down... that's why I think an island node could be a good base for such a guild with all members red and with a strong naval presence. A red guild could also purely aim to grieve other players to no end and risk a ban.
In my opinion, ideally, many red guilds will be local, they will always need the backing and control of a base node, and they will have certain motives that most other players will be aware of. The pk activity should not be random or widespread in Verra, and the corruption system should effectively deter and reduce it to rare occurrences in safe and protected nodes. I welcome dangerous nodes with red guilds well known to traders and other players so they avoid them.
If a guild is known for being red and known for operating in a certain node - pretty much any guild even remotely close to their location will constantly be on the hunt for those red players. They'll have a single BH to know the location of the reds, but they'll be attacking with their greens, so that it's way easier to kill the reds. And then those red guilds will just lose a shitton of time and money on trying to get back to their full powerlvl. And with each PK they'll just keep making it worse for themselves.
Also, seas won't have corruption, so if some group of people want to protect an island (I'd assume it's gonna have something valuable to protect?) - they can just attack any nearing ship, instead of risking corruption for no reason.
This is why I'm saying that I'm sure there's gonna be no red guilds, especially if the corruption is tuned harshly enough to deter corruption to the point you're describing. The risk is too assured and too great to attempt it.
I disagree, there should be a risk for attacking another player but the level of that risk via corruption should only be increased due to level disparity or griefing that player. Otherwise, initial corruption should be a simple bet of "is this player worth risking 30mins of being pinged on the map and put at a disadvantage for that time?"
To recap my opinion: the appropriate amount of pk instances should be rare but not inexistent in most prosperous nodes as these nodes will be protected by highly invested guild members and citizens. In comparison, the pk instances should be fairly common (but with a healthy measure of deterrence for grieving) in some far edges of Verra, in undeveloped nodes under the control of players and guilds who care little to less about their trade or economy but rely solely on piracy and raiding of other nearby players or ships in neighboring nodes.
Perhaps, in each server, the location of safe versus dangerous nodes will vary... More likely, there will be geographically advantageous nodes that are well-situated for trade and prosperity, and therefore, corrupt players will be hunted endlessly in these regions... and then, some other nodes better situated for free-for-all activity. Given how the open sea is currently free-for-all, I predict that the island nodes will host more dangerous players and guilds.
Ehhh I don't think this is a good idea. That approach seems over the top controlling of a player's experience.
I could see myself having 1 char that follows the rules and is an upstanding citizen....and another char that has a bounty on his head.
I don't see why one character's activities have to be linked to the other...
I doubt people would advocate for good things being account-wide...why should bad things?
follow the rules....? with pvp...? aren't we supposed to be testing? Part of testing is finding vulnerabilities and ways to break it
Quite a fair bit of people advocated for guild membership being account-wide. We also don't know whether citizenship and freeholds will be account-wide or not, and I'd imagine people would prefer not to pay x8 (or more) taxes on their freehold, nor would they want to buy that many freeholds in the first place.
Intrepid could just say "your account is your family, so your in-game reputation spills over to other chars".