Is there enough 24/7 structured PvP available?

The only structured PvP that is not time restricted, not limited to server prime-time (castle & node sieges & related fights) and not occasional (caravans,) is Node Wars and Guild Wars. From the wiki: "These can be declared at any time, but the quest objectives will only spawn during server prime-time, but players can kill each other at any time during the war (not only during server prime-time)."

So to always have PvP available a player will need to be part of a constantly waring node and/or guild.

I have not mentioned Naval PvP because that is 'between ships' according to the wiki, although players can use ranged skills. Nor am I considering corruption as that is likely small scale roamers at best.

So to get as much of an open-world PvP fix as I do on the GW2 WvW maps, I need to join a constantly waring node and/or guild. Right/Wrong/Good/Bad?

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Songcaller

Oh no. You can tell I don't keep up with gossip lol.

Ludullu

Neurath wrote: »

Oh no. You can tell I don't keep up with gossip lol.

It's been over a year I think

So you REALLY don't.

Songcaller

Gossip is like gossamer wings. Look too long and you start seeing fairies haha.

Noaani

Kilion wrote: »

NiKr wrote: »

Except it won't be. They already said it won't be a deep dive into the dungeon. So we won't see what they've designed, because there's nothing to show. At best, we'll hear what they want to design, but I somehow doubt it.

Now we are getting closer to it. You want a full 100% walkthrough. If that is the standard for what you consider the only proper explanation, sit tight and wait for Alpha 2.

There are two major issues with this thought right here.

First, a walkthrough of an encounter wont tell us what Intrepid want from PvE any more than a walkthrough of a 1v1 PvP encounter tells us what Intrepid want from PvP.

In Ashes, we know intrepid want PvP to be meaningful. We know they want players to fight over resources. We know they want some players to be hunted and others to hunt them. We know they want to encourage objective based PvP.

With PvE, we know they want it to exist.

The second thing wrong is the suggestion of waiting for alpha to see what PvE will be like. A game doesnt get fully in to its PvE stride until about 3 or 4 years after the game launches, so we will still have literally no idea what Intrepid intend for PvE during alpha.

Depraved

Noaani wrote: »

Neurath wrote: »

I hope we don't go full pvp or full pve. I love pvx hence I backed.

I'm not suggesting full PvE at all, just enough PvE - and good enough PvE - to encourage PvE players to come to Ashes from other games.

The bulk of MMO players are PvE leaning. Note that I am not saying PvE only, centric, preferred or anything like that. Just leaning.

In order to back this up, simply look at populations of PvE centric games (WoW, ESO, FFXIV, GW2), and compare them to PvP centric games (Archeage, BDO, Albion, what ever else).

2 years after launch, all of these PvE centric games have measured their population in millions of players, whereas all PvP centric games measure in fractions of a million. Sure, some people in this games spend some time PvP'ing, and some may even argue that PvP servers in these games are popular. However, PvP servers in a PvE centric game are still PvE leaning.

Now that we have it established that the bulk of MMO players are PvE leaning, if you look at Ashes, what is there to attract a crowd that leans more towards PvE?

The simple answer to this is; nothing at all.

There are games existing with some fantastic content that Ashes needs to pull people away from. People aren't going to go to a different game if the content isnt on par with the game they are playing - or at least they wont stay long if they do jump over.

The stupid thing is, in order to attract a PvE audience, you don't need to abandon or even lower your PvP. All you need to do is up your PvE.

To PvE leaning players, PvP is a thing that is sometimes enjoyed, but sometimes only tolerated when it is unwanted. If the PvE good enough, there is more room to tolerate more unwanted PvP.

Truthfully, when PvE players are complaining about PvP in a PvX game, the complaint isnt "this game is too PvP focused", but rather "your PvE isnt good enough for us to put up with this level of unwanted PvP".

That is why thousands of PvE leaning players left Archeage before Trion even managed to nerf thunderstruck trees (them leaving is arguably the catalyst of that change).

So, leave PvP where it is (or where it falls, in the case of Ashes), but make a game with PvE that rivals WoW, FFXIV and EQ2 and you have a game with a solid core of PvE leaning players that stick around for years due to the great PvE coupled with often times enjoyable, meaningful PvP (and sometimes less enjoyable PvP, but hey), and you have a PvP crowd that has a constant massive number of players to fight, which they can spend their time doing instead of running PvE.

In terms of players, there literally isnt a loser. Everyone gets a better game out of it.

The closest thing to a "loser" is the developer, whom now has to continually push out new PvE content every month or two. This is the only reason no one has done this as yet.

most pvp players don't mind doing pve if its tied to pvp. only a small minority complain that they need to farm gear. also pvp driven players can be good at making money, and with the economy and all that. that's not mutually exclusive to pve players.

regarding the games you mentioned, they don't have more players because the PVP isn't as good or they are too p2w (and pvpers don't like p2w, some do but most don't), or both.

as an example, back then, lineage 1 was the most popular mmorpg in Korea, and was even more popular than wow in that region. and at some point l2 had more players than early wow (not even including the huge private server community) and l2 was so hardcore back then that you could lose your weapon, armor and jewels by dying to mobs, and you didn't even have to be red. people even used to farm gear by stunning players and letting the mobs kill them lmao (then we got that again on classic smh). i think wow became more popular over time because the PVP was a bit more complex and the game was less hardcore (plus the dungeons were fun ngl). pvp games started to get too p2w/bot/rmt.

easier games tend to attract more players too. also "solo" mmorpg games tend to attract lots of players too since most of us gamers are antisocial lol

Kilion

Well, since they "aren't telling us anything" and "there no information" I guess this is a scam doomed to fail

Noaani

Depraved wrote: »

most pvp players don't mind doing pve if its tied to pvp.

Yeah, for sure. I wasn't suggesting otherwise.

There is one sentence in the post you quoted that probably lead to this post, this one

Noaani wrote: »

and you have a PvP crowd that has a constant massive number of players to fight, which they can spend their time doing instead of running PvE.

I wasn't going to put this last statement in, and in fact only added it in with an edit. The reason I wasn't going to add it in is because I knew it would lead to someone assuming I meant this - and I added it back in with the understanding that if someone did I would need to clarify.

The reason for the above statement is to point out that in a game like Ashes, if there is top end PvE akin to WoW (even instanced PvE, which Ashes should have), players wanting to be more PvP focused don't actually need to participate in it at all. People will only need to participate in the content they want to participate in, because there should be more than enough to be able to do that.

As an example, if there is an instanced raid that drops raw materials that can be turned in to top tier equipment, some PvP players absolutely wouldn't want to run that. However, all Intrepid need to do is make the transport of those raw materials back to a node a PvP event (make it so it needs to be transported via caravan, as just one example) and you have added back in that PvP content, while giving PvE players the PvE they want.

It's that "everyone wins" thing, where the only people that don't win are those that *ONLY* want to PvP others while they are taking on top end raid encounters - and such people are probably not desirable to have in the community anyway.

Spif

I wonder if NPC caravans are going to be a thing to drive PvP. I think the number of player caravans are going to be very sparse even later in the game, and non-existent early on.

At somewhat random times, nodes of a certain level will spawn an NPC caravan that travels to another node. Players can sign up to attack or defend, but there will be a limited number of NPC attackers and defenders to keep things from being too easy with low turnout. Possibly NPCs scaling down as more players join. Sort of a moving public PvP event. The winning side splits the rewards evenly, to discourage all players from picking the same side. Level of the rewards and NPCs scaled to the node

Azherae

Spif wrote: »

I wonder if NPC caravans are going to be a thing to drive PvP. I think the number of player caravans are going to be very sparse even later in the game, and non-existent early on.

At somewhat random times, nodes of a certain level will spawn an NPC caravan that travels to another node. Players can sign up to attack or defend, but there will be a limited number of NPC attackers and defenders to keep things from being too easy with low turnout. Possibly NPCs scaling down as more players join. Sort of a moving public PvP event. The winning side splits the rewards evenly, to discourage all players from picking the same side. Level of the rewards and NPCs scaled to the node

I'd be very surprised if not. We already saw some of these being sorta-tested in Alpha-1.

Songcaller

I'd rather not have the npc guards shrink. I do love pvx fights.

Azherae

Neurath wrote: »

I'd rather not have the npc guards shrink. I do love pvx fights.

Fully agreed. If it's an NPC Caravan, it shouldn't be diminished just because PCs happen to join it.

Coordinating with 'Random NPCs' is a great source of fun for me in all the MMOs I play (except BDO obv) and even though obviously this wouldn't be totally lost, it would be nice to not have to 'suddenly adapt to numbers decreasing' just because Players joined up.

Garrtok

George_Black wrote: »

You are phrasing it in a way that shows that you are conditioned to BGs.

It's an owpvp nmo, with real conflict of interests due to farming and leveling.
It doesnt need to provide you with an outlet for safe pvp.
What you call structuted, I call boring, predictable, pointless, lobbied team v team match.

Also warhammer online was open pvp and offered 24/7. Doesn't has anything todo with bgs

RazThemun

Between, sieges, node wars, and caravan attacks I believe pvp will be often enough without risk of being corrupted. PVP will still be very much and every day thing if one is looking for it... it just might differ day to day on how you can pvp without corruption.

unknown

This content has been removed.

Spif

Dustwall wrote: »

Not the right question Imo, it implies pvp is more important when rather it's equal. On top of that it focuses on dynamics which do not favor an mmorpg to be completely honest by this i mean fighting for the sake of it instead of fighting for resources.

It doesn't imply PvP is more important, just acknowledges that it's harder to setup a good ecosystem that supports it.

"I can play for 2 hours and want to PvE (xp farm/gold farm/dungeons/gather/explore/jump puzzle/collect achievments/etc)" - This is an easy condition to satisfy. It may be hard to get a group together for a specific objective. It may be hard to avoid PvP if the specific objective you want to do is contested (but flagging is designed to cover this). But in general, most people can find something they can do that's fun or at least advances the character. If not, that's usually an endgame design issue.

"I can play for 2 hours and want to mostly PvP" - This is a lot harder to design. Solo is tough outside of arena/BGs. So you get a group together and now you need to find other groups that wants PvP. This is why there need to be PvP events, activities and zones. These things are a beacon to gather the PvP'rs to a specific area. And of course there can't be just one any more than PvE can have only one dungeon.

Before the "Dude, it's PvX" people chime in, I'm not talking about pure PvP. I'm talking about caravans with guards and people defending, open world bosses whose area force-flags everyone purple, keeps (or islands) that you PvX against guards and maybe people to take, then you PvX against people trying to take it from you and your guards. Even odd stuff like a race to gather 100 ore...where you can kill the other miners (getting x% of their ore) because participation flags everyone.

Sieges and node wars are not going to be frequent with 30-day cooldowns on declarations, and the resources needed to make a node siege declaration" "Sieging will require a similar amount of resources and time to what it took to develop the node being sieged.[24]"

Sybil_Lanel

Kilion wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

My trust in Intrepid in relation to PvE is near zero.

This is mostly because they simply dont talk about it. If they dont have a basic understanding of what they want from PvE this far in to development, I doubt that they will ever arrive at that understanding.

None of what has been shown gives us an understanding of what they want from PvE - just as nothing of what they have shown gives us an understanding of what they want from PvP. Our understanding of what they want out of PvP comes from what they have said when talking about PvP.

Based on that, the only thing I can assume they want out of PvE is massive amounts of crickets.

That is probably on of the most pessimistic takes you can have on it. One that brings me back to the question I often ask when people seem so sceptic about Intrepid's most basic ability to do anything: Why are you following this project?

There is plenty of information around what they want this game to be and in what ways they intend to build that. In fact, the Tower of Carphin Livestream is about PvE and will shed a light on some of the things they have designed so far to put these things into practice. The Tank reveal also showed us a few things regarding PvE content - a point of interest to be precise. We know that PvE is necessary to find resources, the PvE (quests, dungeons, resource gathering, world bosses, exploration etc) will contribute to Node progression and therefore lead to changes in the world for us to explore, use, fight over, fend against and so on.

Stating there is no goal behind the PvE and no understanding is a bit overly dramatic.

Unless of course you don't trust any of the words and showcases so far, which would lead us back to the question what keeps you here.

Someone being skeptical is completely ok. I have my own concerns about what intrepid is promising. I have to agree with them wanting to have group content that requires you to do PvP and PvE at the same time seems a bit odd. We'll see as always I'll believe intrepid when I see it.

Dygz

I mean... Castles should always be striving to build up their defenses for the upcoming Castle Siege.
Each week one of the three nodes attached to the Castles has a Siege - and Caravans should be runnning frequently to try to progress those Nodes to Stage 3.

And there are 5 Castle Nodes per server, so... if you want to focus on PvP...
Raid the Castle related Caravans - Siege the Castle Nodes each week and participate in the Castle Sieges...
There should be 5 Castle Sieges on your sever each month.
And... you know... you could always hang out on the Open Seas.

Just keep in mind that, for Ashes, PvX means that PvPers will have to also do some PvE.

Kilion

Spif wrote: »

Dustwall wrote: »

Not the right question Imo, it implies pvp is more important when rather it's equal. On top of that it focuses on dynamics which do not favor an mmorpg to be completely honest by this i mean fighting for the sake of it instead of fighting for resources.

It doesn't imply PvP is more important, just acknowledges that it's harder to setup a good ecosystem that supports it.

That is exactly what we should be thinking about: What environment does is take for PvP to occur?

I would argue the 24/7 PvP demand is the one that is "unrealistic" and "unnatural" (I'm saying this without morale judgement) because people fight other people FOR something. That "something" has to be brought into existence first, which is a often times a non-combative, but almost always productive process. That is why it is so difficult to create an environment for it and why things like arenas were created or why the lawless open seas are attracting PvP (ingame as well as real life)

In Ashes we will have to produce what would be the rewards and base equipment in other games. This production takes time, much more time than it takes to kill someone else and take it from them. And I think that is why Ashes didn't go for a 100% droprate PvP system because that would have eliminated the incentive to produce anything in the first place. That in turn would have taken away the objective for PvP and change from getting "new" stuff to redistributing the stuff that is already there.

So what PvP seems to be about in Ashes (imo) is safe(r) access to the grounds from which we can source materials, "fame", character and story progression. Node ABC might block Node XYZ from promoting, which would grant us access to more dungeons and events in XYZ's zone of influence and the solution is PvP to resolve this natural conflict of interests.

It remains to be seen how fierce this fight over territory and story will be, but my suspicion is that this can only be addressed once we are in A2, Intrepid can't figure this one out just on a spreadsheet.

TL;DR: The PvP incentives in Ashes are more "realistic" than in other games, meaning it is rarer to see large scale events but you could have a lot of PvP by "following where the conflicts go". And with many people wanting conflict, I'm not too worried about not enough PvP going on. In that way the PvP - PvE divide of the past decade might actually help us drive this game.

Spif wrote: »

"I can play for 2 hours and want to PvE (xp farm/gold farm/dungeons/gather/explore/jump puzzle/collect achievments/etc)" - This is an easy condition to satisfy. It may be hard to get a group together for a specific objective. It may be hard to avoid PvP if the specific objective you want to do is contested (but flagging is designed to cover this). But in general, most people can find something they can do that's fun or at least advances the character. If not, that's usually an endgame design issue.

Based on what I've read and heard from Steven, the corruption system should just make people consider the risks and rewards of a player going against a non-aggressive player. It is not as simple as "Don't PvP greens", it is "make sure that when killing greens it is worth the consequences.". It is a system to stop indiscriminate and ultimately for the game unproductive killing. And I suspect that is what it will be balanced for in A2 and B1-2. I think people will get away with much more kills on greens than they suspect.

I mentioned this somewhere else: I think we will ultimately see a different kind of "seaons shift" in Ashes, whereas times with a lot of PvE and a lot of PvP will alternate, whereby one begets the other.

Spif wrote: »

"I can play for 2 hours and want to mostly PvP" - This is a lot harder to design. Solo is tough outside of arena/BGs. So you get a group together and now you need to find other groups that wants PvP. This is why there need to be PvP events, activities and zones. These things are a beacon to gather the PvP'rs to a specific area. And of course there can't be just one any more than PvE can have only one dungeon.

That's the function of arenas and the open seas. In a game where things worth fighting over just don't magically fall out of the sky through Points earned in the arena, the space for instant PvP will be limited. Best example is the real world. In that regard Ashes is actually quite realistic. If someone in real life wanted to have a fight with someone else, they would also need to go to a dedicated space for that.

Spif wrote: »

Before the "Dude, it's PvX" people chime in, I'm not talking about pure PvP. I'm talking about caravans with guards and people defending, open world bosses whose area force-flags everyone purple, keeps (or islands) that you PvX against guards and maybe people to take, then you PvX against people trying to take it from you and your guards. Even odd stuff like a race to gather 100 ore...where you can kill the other miners (getting x% of their ore) because participation flags everyone.

I agree that under certain circumstances Ashes should 100% force players to go purple because the contest wouldn't be as meaningful without the risks of players going after other players to win.
Heck, I would probably agree that people going into an open world dungeon and flagging themselves purple should reward them with better drop chances on materials. If the game is adhering to risk-reward, then flagging yourself for PvP can certainly be rewarded by all means.

Spif wrote: »

Sieges and node wars are not going to be frequent with 30-day cooldowns on declarations, and the resources needed to make a node siege declaration" "Sieging will require a similar amount of resources and time to what it took to develop the node being sieged.[24]"

And they shouldn't because that would make them much less meaningful. Imagine you could go and see your favorite band every day of the weekend. This is a good design choice in my opinion.

Sybil_Lanel wrote: »

Someone being skeptical is completely ok. I have my own concerns about what intrepid is promising. I have to agree with them wanting to have group content that requires you to do PvP and PvE at the same time seems a bit odd. We'll see as always I'll believe intrepid when I see it.

Never said "don't be skeptic", I pointed out that the statements made relied on the solidified judgement that Intrepid is unable to produce anything of quality.

WHIT3ROS3

If it takes more than 10 minutes from logging in, to be either killing mobs or killing players there is a problem.

Kilion

WHIT3ROS3 wrote: »

If it takes more than 10 minutes from logging in, to be either killing mobs or killing players there is a problem.

How so?

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