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.
Consequences of socially objectionable behavior
Nuub
Member, Alpha Two
In the recent live stream the question was asked "Will we be able to kick a player from a group just before downing the boss to prevent them from getting loot?" and we were told yes, but the offender would risk reputational damage.
If the risk in being a ninja looter, or guild bank thief, or doing anything socially objectionable, is damage to a player's reputation on the server, then players should NEVER have access to name change, or server transfer as those allow a player to avoid the consequences of their socially objectionable actions, while likely maintaining their ill gotten gains.
If the risk in being a ninja looter, or guild bank thief, or doing anything socially objectionable, is damage to a player's reputation on the server, then players should NEVER have access to name change, or server transfer as those allow a player to avoid the consequences of their socially objectionable actions, while likely maintaining their ill gotten gains.
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Comments
regarding name changes, you can still have them, as long as the player has a unique identifier associated with his character or account. you can still identify the thief by the unique account/character id.
That's a great point, each account should have a unique identifier, that prevents someone from using alt or name change to obscure their identity.
If Intrepid is not surveilling/punishing such behavior it means player will find some solution to the problem, e.g. external files on players, on player made websites or simply refusing to cooperate with anyone they do not know. They could at least help us keep track of those who act antisocial; though I suspect that leaving this to players alone means we will eventually see mass slander occur independent of whether the accusations are true or not.
(Edit: Spelling)
Yeah, just one contact list where all friends & other unilaterally added contacts go and can get filtered into a few categories. No need for multiple social menus. I really liked the layout in my main MMO where party screen, contact list, and clan information were just a single window with 3 tabs. (Perhaps make it possible to drag them apart if you want to reference your contact list while doing something in your clan window. Major clan administration would be taken with NPC menus anyways, so you don't need an infinite amount of buttons in the personal menu.) So much more compact than the bloated systems in most games. Especially since they all copy the party list in the hud overlay anyway.
Regarding people you can't trust, I'm not worried. Most players know to build trust gradually. If you spend 30 minutes on a dungeon with random players and you lose a low chance on a rare piece of gear because they kick you, that's not particularly surprising, and a cheap price for a lesson about a person. If you spend 2 hours with them and then they kick you (and assuming you made your conditions for joining the party clear from the start) you should probably find a more reliable source of teammates in the first place, rather than just wanting to check them in a community database.
This kind of thing is something I wish modern games did more. There have been huge advances in productivity apps that are used on a daily basis, and yet most online games use very outdated systems for keeping track of contacts and other such matters. A fully functional modern contact list and journal built into the game would make a huge difference for people (like myself) who like to keep things organised.
The problem with that is that you're then directly on the way to playing Eve instead of a Fantasy MMO. I think there's merit to having to do and look up some things yourself before you make a decision. Share the list? Sure, for viewing access. Don't automate the colour a name gets shown in because your guild leader tagged it that way. Make your guild leader have to talk to people, and make people figure out who to trust and who to steer clear from.
Call it slippery slope fallacy, but in my experience, automation of communication and information exchanges like this effectively primes a community to automate LookingForGroup tools for itself, and the overland map just turns into a lobby where no one interacts through proximity, no matter how few instances your game has.
Name changes should be doable only IF a server merge is necessary. Names should be permanent.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Name_reservations
Character names
Characters will have a first-name and an optional surname (last name).[10]
Character names are unique per server.[11]
Character name changes will be possible during server merges.[11]
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Alts
Guild membership and alts
A character may only be a member of a single guild.[13]
Alts on the same account can join different guilds.[13]
Intrigue, espionage and intelligence gathering is a legitimate aspect of the game.[13]
Your reputation will already be important in PvP scenarios, but now, since you can also be a bitch and steal loot from other people, you are encouraging each server to create it's own subreddit/discord with blacklists and things of that nature. Don't get me wrong, I used WC3 Banlist a lot back in the day and it was amazing, people would often ask me to share my banlist with them, however I wish I didn't have to play a game that forces you to have yet another Banlist.
In other words, CHINESE SOCIAL CREDIT
The community or more likely larger guilds and hopefully nodes likely establish a range of standards not dissimilar to each other but maybe some range and hopefully by means of regular though social interaction, joining / expelling and rejecting involvement with a little pk for good measure!
Only when there are absolute extremes and outright objectional behavior should the admin step in.
in 20 years of mmorpg, I think I've only been kicked off of a party once so that I couldn't loot. and I've probs only done it 2-3 times to people who had scammed or done bad things to a friend or a guildie. id dare to say 99% of people wont kick or be kicked before looting.
also, do the bosses with guildies or friends duh xD
Especially the first part sounds right to me, seeing how we will interact with overly sensitive teens and cozy solo lobby players. Which is why I would only support a personal journal to keep track of ones own experiences, rather than make these lists sharable. And for the same reason I suggested that you have to directly SEE the person standing in front of you to add them to the reputation files of your journal. Otherwise I fully agree people would just put others on black lists and share those to slander them.
And even if it were more than that - it seems like a worthwhile effort to adjust the software to check for actual participation in the fight rather than just group association upon opening the loot window.
I'm no software developer but I imagine the process to be something like this:
This would also lock leeches out from getting loot they did not work for to earn.
Or make it a public vote to kick someone off the group.
Or make such behavior reportable so that at least the one kicking will receive an ingame punishment - making them corrupt or lowering their reputation with the victims allies.
There are tons of options what could be done and I think what will ultimately be the line of action for Intrepid so that players can figure out how to deal with it themselves. And I think if that is what is going to happen taking responsibility like that can only be encouraged.
Whoever is first to loot gets the loot.[22]
Lootmaster.[1][24]
A master looter (or lootmaster) is a player designated by the party leader to decide how loot is distributed in a dungeon or raid party.[24]
Round-robin.[1][24]
With round-robin looting, party members take turns looting.[24]
Need or greed.[1][24]
This is a traditional need before greed system based on dice rolls.[24]
Since there is very little gear binding in Ashes of Creation, it's left to the party to deal with players who excessively roll Need on loot.[28]"
In this instance of a player wanting to "ninja-loot" by kicking someone, they're clearly the Party Leader already in order to do the kicking, so they'd just instead have chosen the "Lootmaster" setting, and will just keep whatever they want anyway. There's no real need for kicking someone just for loot purposes.
I've put people on my block list at time, usually because they were spamming the chat, but I've never bothered to check who was on it afterwards, and, honestly, I'd probably forgotten why they ended up their anyway. I'm not into drama, so there isn't many "offences" that are worth me bothering in the first place, not worth my time and energy.
That will just be weaponized and abused. Notes are fine, ingame or out of it.
Players will be able to share lists and thoughts regardless, this would at least be a way to create one that was official and the action known to have happened.
It's an evocative topic! Threads like this are very helpful for the team, so appreciate all the feedback here!
I encourage everyone to discuss questions and answers from the monthly Q&A on the forums like this, so we can gauge feedback on them ^_^
In Ashes, there are likely to only be around 2500 players in the part of the world we frequent. These are the people we will be grouping up with.
It isnt like WoW where you could group up with any of the millions of players in your region.
As such, players will very quickly get to know the people around them that want to run similar content. You dont need a server wide reputation list when you already know the people you are likely to end up grouping with
My worst experiences in an MMO were when I experienced RL racism through the game, but after that, were the times felt victimized by disproportionate loot distribution. Makes me want to give up if I cannot earn a reward through merit and must also curry favor with the loot distributors.
If each player had could enable personal loot for themselves, for example, when an item drops, it is distributed first to an eligible player, that player has the choice to take the loot, or pass it to the party to be distributed in the manner set by the party leader. A player can forgo personal loot option in favor of the party option, to not be bothered by the loot prompts. Most loot in the game will be trade materials, right? well, instead of a boss dropping one big certificate, drop 10 fragments of a certificate to promote more consistently even distribution.
This would allow guilds/groups the freedom to distribute loot as they like, while any random person joining them can rest assured that they wont be treated unfairly.
No matter what the loot rules are, you could still get kicked from the group and killed, possibly losing some or all of what you just looted.
Unequal systems are most often championed by those disproportionately rewarded. I like the risk v reward, but i don't want to weigh the risk of getting screwed out of loot, with the risk of missing out entirely.
Sure, there are also some situations (in specific games, mostly) where it is an occasional issue - but it more "not an issue" than it is an issue.