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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Suggestion for Pirate nation/node
Veeshan
Member, Alpha Two
So i had a thought that there could be room for a pirate nation/node that functions slightly different than the current nodes we are getting the idea of pirate nodes (Could even have the occasional bandit one) is to add pvp hotspots where the kill penalty is either non existent or you gain much less corruption as a citizen im not sure how deferential the current corruption system is with punishing effects however i feel this system would provide pvp area's and hotspot where player can avoid if they dont want increased chance of being PK aswell as adding a hot spot for bounty hunting aswell.
Ok the idea of these nodes
There be say a handful of pirate modes around the spot i would say 7-9 of them going by the map we currently have there be 3 on each main continent and then a couple on islands, these nodes will acts a little independent of the nnormal node system where they are not influenced/blocked by normal node zone of influence from ranking up however the difference is they compete with themselfs so there only be 1 pirate metropolis node 2 city nodes 2 town nodes and the rest cap out at village node level (Reason for 2 city nodes is to give option on what one might hit the final stage when the metropolis is destroyed)
Note: you could cap pirate node at city and not allow for pirate metropolis it depends how important this node type is realy if you give the pirates one or not
Effect on the world
- Pirate nodes zone of influence will grow as it levels up (It wont block progression of towns around it since it independent of normal node system) however this zone would do something else instead which will be to flag everyone in it as combatants to everyone who is corrupted
- Corrupted p[layers wont receive normal death penalty within the area of influence or significantly less this is to promote these players staying within these areas so there be heavy pvp around these area but not as much outside
- You could also play around with death penalty in this zone as making players drop a small amount if items from inventory such as animal bonds and things however could make loot worth more from mobs within this influence aswell as a trade off
Citizenship
- being a citizen of a pirate node will flag you as corrupted and will be KOS to all other nodes
- Citizens will also not receive penalty for dealths/corruption penalty from kills/deaths in the ocean
How the nodes work with seiges
- Pirate nodes will progress at a quicker rate than normal nodes however when they get seige/destroyed they get bumped back down to level 0 so players in local region may be more incentivised to keep the node at bay and preventing it from getting to high
- high enough level nodes will get a pirate shipyard which allow very slightly stronger shipbuilder recipes/results
infamy
Pirate citizens gain infamy from pvp actions which is a form of currency used to purchased unique items in the pirate from pirate style armor recipes to boats and so on.
I think the nodes would be a cool idea when it comes to adding pvp hotspots in certain area's of the map aswell as incentivising non corrupt players in the area a goal to seige pirate outposts before they get to built up where they become stronger and have more sway in the area they can raid (pvp without as much penalty).
Ok the idea of these nodes
There be say a handful of pirate modes around the spot i would say 7-9 of them going by the map we currently have there be 3 on each main continent and then a couple on islands, these nodes will acts a little independent of the nnormal node system where they are not influenced/blocked by normal node zone of influence from ranking up however the difference is they compete with themselfs so there only be 1 pirate metropolis node 2 city nodes 2 town nodes and the rest cap out at village node level (Reason for 2 city nodes is to give option on what one might hit the final stage when the metropolis is destroyed)
Note: you could cap pirate node at city and not allow for pirate metropolis it depends how important this node type is realy if you give the pirates one or not
Effect on the world
- Pirate nodes zone of influence will grow as it levels up (It wont block progression of towns around it since it independent of normal node system) however this zone would do something else instead which will be to flag everyone in it as combatants to everyone who is corrupted
- Corrupted p[layers wont receive normal death penalty within the area of influence or significantly less this is to promote these players staying within these areas so there be heavy pvp around these area but not as much outside
- You could also play around with death penalty in this zone as making players drop a small amount if items from inventory such as animal bonds and things however could make loot worth more from mobs within this influence aswell as a trade off
Citizenship
- being a citizen of a pirate node will flag you as corrupted and will be KOS to all other nodes
- Citizens will also not receive penalty for dealths/corruption penalty from kills/deaths in the ocean
How the nodes work with seiges
- Pirate nodes will progress at a quicker rate than normal nodes however when they get seige/destroyed they get bumped back down to level 0 so players in local region may be more incentivised to keep the node at bay and preventing it from getting to high
- high enough level nodes will get a pirate shipyard which allow very slightly stronger shipbuilder recipes/results
infamy
Pirate citizens gain infamy from pvp actions which is a form of currency used to purchased unique items in the pirate from pirate style armor recipes to boats and so on.
I think the nodes would be a cool idea when it comes to adding pvp hotspots in certain area's of the map aswell as incentivising non corrupt players in the area a goal to seige pirate outposts before they get to built up where they become stronger and have more sway in the area they can raid (pvp without as much penalty).
2
Comments
No, sorry. Griefing will neither be supported nor rewarded in Ashes of Creation.
The vast majority of players don't want it, and developers don't want it. The minority of people who want to run around killing newbies and teabagging them or whatever are going to have to look for a different game.
Well i see it as opt in pvp since you can just not go into there area of influence and then it not an issue at all and it only be a small portion of the map. or you can destroy it and force it to go somewhere else.
Steven does want pvp otherwise it wouldnt exsist at all it seems he just doesnt want griefing which i know alot of people want
Your suggestion goes against this quote, @Veeshan ... by rewarding PK kills without any consequence.
Not only would Intrepid not support it, nobody would be interested in that kind of PvP (except a niche crowd of PK players).
There are other MMOs that support that kind of gameplay.
You're proposing that it be an entire node. That's not going to be a small portion of the map. It's going to be a pretty big chunk, and has massive consequences on the way the game will work. And I don't see it bringing anything good, rather it will just be a shelter for toxicity.
Please keep in mind, your post is maybe the 1,000th time this sort of thing has been suggested. Not only is the horse dead, the flesh beaten from it has fully decomposed and the bones are powder.
You would be correct there maybe having half the penalty but still relevant however this come down to how hard the corruption penalty is anyway, yes u want penalty however you also dont want to over penalty is which is my current concern, i like pvp however i dont grief. I just dont want it to go the new world route where they basicly removed any kinda of pvp or reason to pvp in the open world cause that to me creates a dull world.
Not realy that larger map size 480km there a smidge over 100 nodes on launch think it was 106 or something which means each node is about 4.6km roughtly influence does get higher however the influence a pirate node wouldnt be as large as a normal node for the sake of the pvp area.
like at t3-4 would be just that node size and then t5-6 would just include the surrounded 2-3 nodes or so (Since it be coastal node) so the influence size max would be like 12km at max level which i wouldnt think would occur very often since the incentive to bop it down if it progresses close to your spot.
influence wouldnt only happen when it gits like stage 2-3 so i see them getting up and going then being bopped back down to 0 every couple of weeks i dont see one getting to high rank often and if it does it then creates a huge event for players to realy come to gether and wanna knock it back down to 0 to reset it
Don't worry about that. PvP will be essential to this game. It's practically unavoidable. I'd say that if you can't stand PvP and never want to do it, you will probably not be happy with this game. There will be ample opportunities to fight other players. The only thing that it won't have is unrestricted, consequence-free PvP.
That's why we will always have corruption for killing players that opt-out, as long as they aren't participating in a PvP event (siege, caravan, and so on). And in those cases, participation will be an implicit opt-in.
(Basically, your pirate node idea seems like it's trying to find a place where PvP will be available to people, but it's not needed because we'll already have plenty of those.)
the idea i wanted to go with pirate nodes is to have spots on the map where there high conflict that doesnt force pvp since u can just advoid the area i dont like griefing or people who do it cause its killed many pvp games in the past but i also want there to be constant pvp in some spots maybe this will form natural or the guild/node wars will allow for it and so on, i was looking for ways tocreate more content for pvp players and bounty hunters aswell is all, and where there boats pirates tend to follow too. so having a pirate city does make sense where there ocean trade there always been piracy
Eh? The wiki says there may be rewards for killing bounty hunters although the source video was privated: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Bounty_hunters#Corrupt_players_killing_bounty_hunters
The whole hide and seek / PvP with bounty hunters system is also a psychologically rewarding system.
I've found that "PVP zones" tend to be dead zones 90% of the time. People avoid them, even people who want to PVP, because, well people avoid them, so there's not much PVP to be had.
I LOVE the idea of being a pirate, but I think within the confines of the game's current rules and systems, the freedom of choice would allow you to still do it, without totally redesigning the death/PVP system, and in essence creating a "faction" in a game that does not want factions.
These gimmicky stuff is what makes a structured thing into a mess.
Note that they said almost 4 years ago there may be rewards. But Steven has said specifically that they want deterrents in the game to rampant PKing.
"The corruption system is intended to deter mass murdering, not to provide incentives by which players can go out and gain corruption." - Steven Sharif
He doesn't want it to be so harsh that nobody ever PKs anyone, because in that case, just prevent it from happening at all. Here is Steven's response to the question of whether a guild would be punished if guild members gained corruption.
"No I don't think so either. And the reason why is we want to deter it, but we don't want to make the system meaningless; and if the deterrent becomes too heavy-handed then it's a system without a purpose. And I think that the intent behind the corruption is that like during a rise in passion and like anger and whatever you want to make this decision and do something and you'll suffer the repercussions later. But if those repercussions are just overwhelmingly bad and even anti-social in the sense that like your guild is like hey man you went corrupted and this gives us like corruption points on the guild, and like you're out of here, then people just aren't going to choose to use it; and then at which point might as well just take it out. So I think there's a healthy balance between the type of deterrent used." - Steven Sharif
He wants to discourage the behavior so that it's rare, but not discourage it so much that it never happens. But he also doesn't want to flat-out encourage it either. An area that gives free reign to ganking whoever, whenever, that is absolutely inviting the behavior.
As to whether the hide and seek thing is psychologically rewarding, maybe. And some players might also like the challenge of everything being harder because they gain corruption and become weaker. Some players might like the thrill of danger that being heavily corrupted might cause them to lose gear. I think that will discourage most people, but yes, it might be that some people like that sort of thing. Just because someone might like it, that doesn't mean it's being encouraged. If you implement spanking as a deterrent, and one out of every 20 kids gets a thrill from being spanked, that doesn't mean you're trying to encourage misbehavior.
The bounty system clearly is there as a benefit to bounty hunters, not as a benefit to players with bounties. Having a target put on your head that people might hunt you down should discourage most players from getting corrupted, but sure, some people might actually enjoy it. They have also tried to remove many of the corruption penalties for those fights, so that bounty hunter/corrupted battles are meaningful and don't involve a prepared bounty hunter one-shotting a weakened player trying to run away. But again, I don't believe they're trying to make corruption be all that fun.
Some sort of node independent of zoi could work. I think instead of it having citizenship it's guild controlled. Similar to a castle however not nearly as influential. This would cap the player numbers from getting out of control
Let's say there's 5 "pirate Island nodes". They could have layouts like a regular node with building choices the pirate king could make but tailored to ship building, raiding etc. Maybe unique recipes, crafting options, or even augments could be ahd here. It could have a coffer similar to a reliquary but for pirate booty. I think this node could be taken by a rival guild or if attacked by more rule abiding citizens the node could be destroyed and the booty coffers emptied there by requiring thr next crew to rebuild from scratch.
There would have to be some sort of "raid" similar to a node seige. Not as destructive but more tailored towards acquiring treasure/loot.
I think there could be some sort of mercenary function where you could be hired by mayor's of regular nodes seiging each other. This would be a way of regular nodes being able to aquire or use any sort of unique things that are specific to the pirate node. Example pirate bards have unique buff so you hire a pirate crew to help defend a seige.
There seems to be a logical connection with bounty hunters so a system between those could probably be made.
Again just spit balling for fun.
Nodes like that would only be reasonable as Islands Nodes,
"not receive penalty for dealths/corruption penalty from kills/deaths in the ocean" Is completely insane and overpowered, going completely against the core idea of Risk vs Reward,
A node like that would work pretty much as a faction and Ashes isn't a faction based MMORPG.
Aren't we all sinners?
Corrupted.
We’re through the looking glass, people. 🤯
Not tonight.
There will also be some forms of PvP that are lower risk and opt-in, such as arenas!
It is interesting to theorycraft other node types besides the four (Divine, Economic, Military, Scientific)
I encourage creative thinking like this and would love to hear what others could think up in terms of different node types!
I just think it be worth having a node available that is the opposite of military to a degree, military very anti PK with the bounty hunter system which would reduce pvp activity around them but a node that adds incentive or softens penalty for the corrupted player would work hand in hand with them maybe something like killing bounty hunter player greatly reduces your corruption you have so they work hand in hand with each other bounty hunter hunt the corrupted player if corrupted player beats bounty hunter he gets rewarded with reduction of corruption could be a way to go.
But i think a node that promotes open world pvp for the player who wish to play the bad guy aka pirate or bandits has a place aswell, so we kinda get a good vs evil thing going between pvp player with bounty hunters vs bandits/pirates. I feel there some good conflict with something like this.
Ofcourse not looking for a system to promote killing people who dont stand a chance to defend themself such as lowbies and bullying people you already killed recently.
there also lead to potential possibly to incentives pve players to go out of the way in trying to destroy these specific nodes to reduce the amount of bandits/pirates in the world by preventing them to gain a foot hold in there area. and people on the other side of the map might be no thats good cause if there around there city/metropolis we might get peace in our neck of the woods since most heavy pk player would hang out in that town but if the city is destroyed in seige war they might pop up on the other side of the map again or spread out of they dont have another town to fall back too
does seem weird that you can be like im a bounty hunter now, next day im gonna murder a bunch of green cause reduction in corruptuin time next day im good again im a bounty hunter
We will have plenty of "kill them to defend the caravan" or "capture the castle" kind of PvP. He is proposing "just kill whoever you see" kind of PvP.
In LOTRO many players played exclusevely for Ettenmoors - an open-world PvP location. It was very similar to what is proposed here: just kill whoever you see, and get "infamy" or "fame", which then gets you PvP-ranks and rewards.
In vanilla World of Warcraft, by the admission of Kevin Jordan, one of three original game designers, Alterak Valley was planned to be something similar as well, but they've eventually turned it into another battleground.
The reason why he would want to discourage it is because people with high level and powerfull gear would just go around killing new players after a bad day at work.
However, when you can't do such a thing generally, but there is a specific place where you can, the story is completely different. Because the only people who would even go to such a place are the ones who are up for it. There is no "griefing", and nothing to try to discourage or prevent. You sign a waver at the entrance, and it says "I will murder anyone I want, and I shell be attacked by anyone who thinks he can take me". And you go in.
I have a sence that because of that desicion made about Alterac Valley back in the day, World of Warcraft players were robbed of their free-pvp zone. And because World of Warcraft had such an influence on so many games that came out subsequently, many other players were robbed as well. And now I hear things like:
And even:
I assure you, none of that is true.
1) There is no leveling in pirate zones. You come there at lvl 50 if you wish. The system of pirate node development would have to be something different.
2) By killing other players you get pirate "infamy". Infamy gets you one of, say, 15 "pirate" ranks, which are really hard to get. Takes months to get rank ~10, takes years to get rank ~15.
3) Each rank gives you access to good "pirate" gear that adds cool "pirate" abilities.
its not necessarily trying to advoid corruption its more trying to get more having the option of getting more bank for your buck with corruption before your foced to pve or time out corruption timer to get it down.
Some players like to pvp more than others so giving them a node to accomodate that with the trade off of loosing other node bonuses you could have it you citizen there allows for more options with play style. Military node kinda helps with bounty hunter system however that pvp is tied in with people being corrupted and if there no corrupted player pvpers feel like there on a timed event where there time is controlled on players being corrupted on when they get to pvp if that makes sense.
i was looking for a node that offers more general pvp experience more often before having to wait for your corrupting timer or what not. This being said it depends alot on the current ratio of corruption vs kill which might be fine as is but if it isnt a pk pirate/bandit node could allow for a little extra pvp experience vefore they need to do there corruption reduction quests/farm