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
In the Gatherer/Defenders case randomization just makes it to where there is nothing you can protect and no real gameplay value is added from this. Should either be FULL loot gatherable with some minimal protection slots through skills or a certain spec or Rare items are 100% drop on death. There should be no reward for death with Rare items. It is a more rewarding experience to make a safe trip.
In the aggressors perspective randomization inherently makes it not worth the risk of possibly losing your gear. What is the point of ganking for "The Possibility" someone does have some rare item.. And if they do have it and it doesn't even drop.. That is just ridiculous.. The risk does not equal the reward here.
an example Player 1 is gathering Gets 1 log and 1 legendary mat. Player 1 gets killed by player 2. Player 1 drops the log and keeps the legendary item. Player 2 loots the log but now has corruption. Player 2 gets killed while having corruption. Player 2 loses a WHOLE piece of gear for a log. How is this fair gameplay for either party? Player 1 should not be rewarded for dying at all. Players OR Mobs.
This scenario should be impossible if someone has rare loot.
Either randomization should be taken out or you should be able to detect if someone has a rare item and it drops. Maybe a glowing pouch or something?
Meaningful conflict was described as:
And risk versus reward was described as defending your home during a node siege:
I hope this question is originating with the CMs and the design team is not considering "a way to mitigate or eliminate the risk of dropping gathered materials."
PvP on gatherers is something that needs a little give and take.
Gatherers are one of the backbones of the economy, and there are a few different types of gatherers. You have pure gatherers who want nothing to do with PvP. You have players who are gathering just to level up a profession, and then you have players who are gathering as they travel. Lastly you have your PvP predators who are there to kill gatherers for resources and or sport.
A pure gatherer who does not want to fight should not be subjected to forced PvP every time they go out to gather. If they are not good at PvP and end up paying a resource tax every time they go out then they are going to stop gathering or even leave the game which is not good for player experience or the games economy. On the other hand, these players should not be able to walk into an area, take rare resources out from under another player or guilds nose and be allowed to leave unharmed without consequences. In New World, having to watch unflagged players or even worse bots mine a rare resource right in front of me when I would be willing to risk a fight over it was the biggest turn off the the entire lifestyle side of the game. In ashes allowing PvP against gatherers through the corruption system is essential, but PvP should be incentivized over rare resources and discouraged over common materials. Having drop rates like 20% common material and 100% rare materials with this being lowered to 10% common and 80% rare when a player fights back would help accomplish this. This means that pure gatherers will have to take some risk if they want the rewards of rare materials.
Players who are looking to level up their skills or do some quick gathering would take well to the above system as well since they are likely more open to PvP around resources but won’t be thrust into it over every common material.
PvP players. Currently from what we know of the corruption system. Gathering is inefficient. There is no incentive to gather if Players can instantly acquire tons of resources by targeting and stealing from players who are typically weaker and less experienced in combat. Again, players who aren’t PvP focused need end game or side gameplay loops too! Having players quit the game after reaching the max level because they can’t go out to gather without being killed is not good for the game. Incentivizing non-PvP players to take part in some PvP like node sieges is very healthy, but being forced into heavy PvP in every aspect of the game would be a huge turn off.
Additionally, trying to hunt gatherers, especially for sport, should come at some sort of risk for players. Currently corruption only punishes players if their target doesn’t fight back. This means a player who knows they are going to die to a Player Killer even if they fight back has to make a choice between saving resources by fighting back or sacrificing resources to inflict a punishment on the Player Killer, and regardless of their choice the killer will be rewarded with loot.
Player killers should receive corruption for mindlessly attacking gatherers, however we also wouldn't want to force players to be punished for fighting over rare resources. I would suggest the following change to the corruption system. Players who initiate combat against non-combatants and kill them after they fight back and turn into combatants should be subjected to corruption based on the items dropped by the player. Killing a player that was carrying rare materials would not warrant any corruption, but killing a player for common materials or sport would give the player killer corruption. Making this change would force player killers to make risk reward assessments about initiating PvP, and let their victims put up a fight knowing that doing so won’t absolve their attacker of corruption if they are they are being attacked for a malicious reason. (Basic resources or sport)
As said earlier in this topic, as it tackle the very pillar of Ashes.
No one wants Ashes to become too friendly.
That said i totally understand that gatherer players wich are more interested in gathering, ressources and commerce are in disadvantage regarding player who just want to pvp and loot you.
One thing that could maybe work is to have in your inventory a really LIMITED slot that never drop if you die.
Let me pull an exemple to be more precise and comprehensive :
Lets say you are a Lumberjack guy, you are specialised in gathering wood. Well maybe at some point when you mastering Lumberjack you unlock one or two slot of your inventory that won't drop but are only for wood ressources.
That way gatherer can chose what they really dont want to lose but it need to be very limited, so it imply sacrifice and choice.
If its very limited but still usefull, i think it can be a solution to compensate the frustration.
Maybe i'm wrong ! feel free to discuss about it.
But please, never ever abandon the risk & reward philosophy, you would ruin your game, and all the interest i have in it.
and only the corupted can drop items
It will divide the community, destroy the risk & reward system and then everything will follow and will just become pure entertainments with absolutely no logical living system.
It really looks like a flag on/off pvp system and we saw the result, a huge fail, a non-sense world feeling fake.
+ it gives a superpower to the "non fighter" as they can attack whenever they wants to pick the fight they wants since they "cant be attacked".
So basically your "simple" solution doesn't solve anything and bring huge imbalance in the game.
Sorry but for me its a huge no and i hope you understand why.
Yes!! Please tell me what you have in mind?
Hahhahaha this would be sad if it wasn't so funny, what did I tell ya?
First Intrepid added a no corruption zone, only the PvP gods are going to go there and everyone else is "at so much more risk now". PvP elitists rejoice, carebears umadbro?
Now they might add ways, probably zones, for carebears not to lose any loot when they get killed by the PvP elitists. Carebears rejoice, PvP elitists umadbro?
This is my opinion: removing corruption from the ocean was a bad decision. Adding ways to remove the 25% loss of material will be another bad decision.
I understand Intrepid needs to cater to more players or else Ashes might not succeed, but shouldn't you let Alpha 2 play with "no changes" from what we knew since the Kickstarter and change/balance things from there? Do you really think you need to cater to both the carebear/PvP elitists extremes?
In any case, Steven said the decision to remove corruption from the ocean was made "several months ago", so I hope I'm wrong, but I'd bet the decision to create more zones without corruption and to balance that with carebear zones/mechanics is already made, this "poll"/thread is just to test the waters.
It's a shame, but like everything in life you gotta hope for the best and prepare for the worse, Ashes is no exception.
Here's me hoping: stop changing how some of the core mechanics work, let's test it out first. Unless you are already testing and you already know the original ideas were great in theory but bad in practice, so just let us know (:
Well, this has not only not cleared my confusion, I am now significantly MORE confused.
Perhaps I misunderstand 'core pillars of gameplay' though.
A separate way of going about the problem could be to send out a signal of some kind, like a yell for help to the nearest players in the area, notifying them that you're being attacked (maybe sends a pop up on the side of the screen to the nearest 3 players or something). If in real life you're being attacked in an alley you're not going to stay silent, you're going to yell out "help" and try to get people's attention.
Now this, I think should be an optional thing, not something that's forced on players. Especially because this acts as a "double-edge sword", theoretically the player(s) you're calling over will help you against your attacker. However, they can always attack you instead, or kill both parties while they're injured and not at full strength. A myriad of branching possibilities can occur.
Now, from the attackers perspective this creates hesitation, imagining that people are rushing over, and aren't going to help you because you're the bad guy in this.. This can create some thinking like "is the kill worth it?". Weighing Risk vs. Reward, capturing the essence of Ashes of Creation. From the defenders perspective, is getting help worth the risk of calling over a possible lunatic? Let's not forget the 3rd player.. How strong is this opponent? How many other will also come to help? This could be a trap laid by 2 people who are actually working together, so once I jump in the fight they'll both turn and kill me. Or, I've just saved someone from dying and not only do I get a dopamine rush like no other after helping someone, but maybe I make a new friend with the player I saved and/or maybe the player is a master crafter and I can create a connection with a new trade partner?
I think this idea captures the essence of an MMO. Bringing more player interactions and creating stories that will be remembered, forging friendships and rivalries alike. The possibilities are endless!
Side-Note: I think this would work better if it wasn't some AOE signal, and instead it just notifies up to (x) players that are within (x) range. So for example, if there's 10 players around me, maybe 3 get notified and considering 1 or 2 won't even bother and continue what they're doing, then 1 person shows up to help. (Testing Required.) =D
There is no real risk for the gankers. Gankers won't attack unless they are fairly certain they will win. If the gatherer doesn't fight back the attackers can stop, move on and not get corrupted. Sure, they can't see the health bars exactly, but there is nameplate degradation and people will learn to stop well before the killing blow. It's not going to be a real risk. So again, the gatherers carry almost all the risk in a typical scenario, not the gankers. The only thing the gankers risk is not being able to steal the other person's stuff if they don't fight back. That's not much of a risk is it? Sure, they'll be flagged for a few minutes, susceptible to attacks from others, but that's really it.
I still think we should test the system as-is in A2, but there is zero doubt in my mind that dropping 50% or 25% of gatherables & processed goods - as well as mob certificates - upon death will turn away a massive amount of potential players that aren't used to harsh death penalties like that. You can grind for 2 hours and lose half of all you worked for in 30 seconds or less.
It's definitely a thing that is going to divide the player base, and no matter which preference you have for this system, everyone should acknowledge that the current death penalty system will result in significantly fewer active players overall.
I am ok with the current system. I am used to the Eve Online mentality of "Don't fly what you can't afford to lose". But I know it's a system for a minority of the potential MMO player base out there, and ultimately it's up to Steven what kind of game he wants to make, and how many players he is ok with alienating in order to make his dream game come true. As he says himself, you can't please everyone.
One gameplay system I can see working is to let gatherers use their artisan skill tree points (if they get that) to either increase gathering yields, or to reduce the percentage of dropped materials upon death. Make it a trade-off, where they have to chose either. I think that's a fair risk vs. reward system, and it lets people choose to be more risk averse or risk seeking as they see fit.
Why play those other games if PvP bothers you so much, since you're traumatized by real life ? ? ? ?
This is because the game should be more skill and context-based. . . variable MS based on relevant, physical, and realistic factors like Encumberance, Agility, Strength, even Stamina.
Stamina should play a more significant part. It's not Constitution, constitution is constitution. Endurance should be part of the game imo, and mana removed from physical classes.
Stamina allows more ways to differentiate classes and characters, and provides some extra tactical and strategic depth to navigate.
If you can kit out the physical classes without random moves and abilities that amount to magic. . . if you can make them truly Physical without any cheap and easy 'magical' crap. . . then you have a deeper and better game. And you can go all-in on the magic classes too without anything bleeding into one another.
I want PvP to be unique and interesting; balance is polish. Balance is easy. It's changing a value from 30 yards to 25 yards, or 400 movespeed to 395 movespeed. It's tuning.
Making an interesting and fun game without 64 shades of grey is the priority, so please do so.
I hope the game is nuanced so the PvP is nuanced and those with deep multiplicit skills can excel, and those without deep and multiplicit skills can flounder.
Though making basic 'manpower' useful would be great; hence any low level individual can contribute something and do something for their self. Crafting, Gathering and Processing in general can require 'manpower' to operate everything or make it efficient, basic spearmen could be useful, basic shieldmen could be useful, and since most events and difficult areas (half the game a difficult area?) will require groups, anyone can do basic stuff, low-skilled can group together:
the low-skilled can still be useful to themself and others.
I think methods of mitigating risk should be limited to actions such as hiring NPC guards, grouping with other players, and utilizing mounts for escape or combat strategies. Passive protections should be predominantly limited.
Perhaps a "passive" protection that I could see as an exception is a consumable scroll that offers improved temporary resistance, but does not provide 100% invulnerability against dropping the item, to the person or item buffed by the spell. Perhaps a guild invests in the creation of such a scroll as preparation for a contested raid in hopes of looting and retaining a legendary drop. Such a scroll would be difficult to craft by a Master Scribe, extremely rare/valuable, and possible to be dropped upon death until the enchantment and item are consumed.
I think the community needs some hands-on experience to answer this question properly - at the moment we're all just throwing suggestions based on paper notes.
in A1 I could mine all the gold/silver that I wanted and was left alone - but A1 didn't have a functional economy so it's difficult to gauge how often a gatherer is gonna get ganked on live.
If it's super oppressive then yes, especially given the enormous gathering to crafting ratios, gatherers would need greater protection.
However, that was not my experience in A1 - hence I don't see the need for it.
It all depends on how aggressively players are going to target gatherers in a live environment - I have no gauge for this.
Otherwise I feel things will get very toxic very quickly. Especially where the corruption may punish the PVPER, but it can be mitigated by fleeing and dumping their loot, or still having a numbers advantage. Where the gather only seems to lose, whether it’s resources, respawning and having to travel back (time), nor reap any rewards when their assailant is killed by a bounty hunter (unless their could be a time limit if they’re killed by a bounty hunter within a given time, the receive their lost items, which could be a nice way to reward hunters, and mitigate some of the pain of gathering.)
Hunters I can understand being PVPed as they’d typically be more prepared for a fight. But I think gathers would need their equipment to give them a speed/movement advantage/cloak ability to allow them to have a chance of escape as they’re typically the last ones who want to be involved in PVP.
I think this is a great way of mitigating the fathers loss. PVPers shouldn’t be able to scout/target high level gathers just because they’re getting rarer items that just means as you progress in a non-combative skill you experience would progressively get worse. If the pvper isn’t within say 10-15 levels of the gathering requirement for that item they shouldn’t know it’s worth or rarity.
This would allow for “ones man’s treasure is the pvpers man’s trash.” And give the victim a better chance at recovery at the very least.
This is so important and needs to be considered at all times!!! Thanks for this!
This is a great idea, especially because I see no true risk to the pvpers and only punishment to gathers. If you things were stolen, it would definitely be known locally that a thief took items very valuable away from someone. There should be no quick ways for pvpers to cash out for griefing non-combative players.
@Vaknar I somehow missed this hint about Materials.
Where is that Dev Discussion topic?
Resources have to be gathered in order to be processed and to allow creating items.
If you feel that this initial step has to be protected, to ensure the existence of caravans and sieges, then surround each node with a full PvP transition zone. This can also be like a variable corruption mechanic, higher near developed nodes and lower further away.
Then let gatherers to transport those materials to the closest node only, relatively safe while being protected by own guilds, guild alliances, NPC guards placed by the mayor and maybe bounty hunters if they are willing to do that bounty hunting activity.
Neutral foreign gatherers could gather too with a bit more risk, as maybe those NPC guards will not interfere if a neutral is attacked. Let the mayor decide how to configure the NPCs.
In any case, neutral foreign gatherers will be forced to deliver the materials to the closest node to avoid the PvP zone. And that will create the reason for player driven caravans.
If you just want to protect the feelings of gatherers, I am totally against arbitrary rules.
Why? Because I think you just want to add a lot of grind to the gathering skill. And drunk people cannot PvP.
Its very simple, really. The basic principle behind the game is the risk vs. reward nature.
If you take away the risk of losing the materials, then the reward needs to be abyssal small as well.
Small to the point, where Gatherers would have to think ("Why should i do that, if i could make 100x more gathering naturally")
So for me it feels wasted. Build on the existing system, that already provides a way to mitigate your risk in a multitude of ways:
But the ability to not drop materials or the ability to become unattackable would be hands down the worst design decision Intrepid has ever made and directly go against everything the core design of the game stands for. 0 Risk must equal 0 Reward.
If there is "save" ways to gather, then it will de-values all the gathering alternatives that involve taking risks. Reward without Risk is a growing cancer that corrodes all the systems connected with it.
That logic should be applied in equal measure to the people attacking the gatherers, and under the current system, that risk is negligible. Low risk, high reward for gankers, because they won't initiate the combat unless they are fairly certain they will win. It's not going to be fair 1v1 fights mostly. It'll be duos and trios out looking for solo gatherers. If the gatherer doesn't fight back, they can just stop before the nameplate degrades too much and look for the next target. Or if they deem it worth it, they can kill the gatherer so one of the gankers becomes corrupt, and the others can immediately kill their corrupt friend to remove the corruption, and make sure all the loot is saved and the only cost is the xp debt.That's not really a risk they take then, that's just the cost of doing business for them.
I am not even saying "change the system" here, before A2. Let's test it. But the whole risk vs. reward logic needs to be applied to the gankers too, not just the gatherers, and a lot of people seem to be forgetting that in this thread.
Personally I think the corruption system needs to be changed from only applying to the player giving the killing blow, to every player involved in the combat that leads to the target dying, even if the killing blow is landed by an NPC. Then we'd be talking about a more fair risk for the reward of stealing another players stuff.
Alternately, let the gatherers drop stuff upon death, but that stuff should disappear completely and not be lootable by anyone. That also fits the low risk, low reward for the gankers, but it's not really my preferred system.
Most people don't like risks. IF you put risk on the attacker side, then it will not attack.
Who will provide the risk in the game then? Or why?
It should be up to the gatherers to find in-game ways to mitigate the risk.
*hire merc(s) to travel with you for 1hr and pay them appropriately.
*bring a few friends and break them off a piece when your done gathering.
*git gud and be ready for an inevitable attack. Maybe take the time to make sure u have a solid mount , some good Cc and awareness so you can get away.
*Or you know, just kill the person trying to kill you.
I believe the intention was to have meaningful player interactions and putting in systems that "protect" a gatherer instead of encouraging them to socialize works in opposition to that. In top of that, the places pkers are liable to want to kill gatherers are probably only gonna be the places that have resources actually worth the risk so it should be on the gatherer to weigh the risk vs reward and decide if it's worth it to engage in activity there, and then if they should take some of the options I listed above.
Closing thoughts, if you something like having a "protected" item slot for one artisan class then you'll probably end up having to do it for all of them and undoubtedly, pvpers will find a way to make use of it to keep gear that they killed another player for which then pisses off the gatherer who didn't have it that managed to get group of his friends to help kill the initial pker to try and get his stuff back, but whoops it doesn't drop so too bad for him and so on and so forth. Sorry for the ramble.
Being killed is annoying depending on how much time it takes to get back to gathering but if you also lose 50% or 25% of your stuff you effectively also lose that much time. Say I go out and it takes me an hour to gather 1000 Iron ore, and someone kills me as I walk away from the mine/area and takes 50%. Not only did I lose 500 Iron ore, I lost half an hour of time and will need to spend that again to get back the 500 Iron ore.
So go back more often and be safe you say. Let's say I go back every time I have 250 Ore, and say walking back to the node takes as little as three minutes. That's 6 minutes per 250 Ore, or 30 Minutes for 1000. Extra time lost just to gather basic materials.
And this risk isn't there for attackers, they can just circle an area where gatherers are and pick off those they find, a 30 sec fight to loot half an hour worth of gathering materials with barely any risk, and they can keep that pace up going between different material gatherers.
Why would I gather materials, if I can just kill people for it? Even better with higher level materials, I don't need to spend any skill in being a gatherer, I can just hunt the gatherers instead.
I don't mind dying, I don't mind running back out to the gathering area, I don't mind us fighting over a good area or rare material/spawn. But I do mind being a loot piñata for PVP'ers who lose no time invested if they get killed and get a ton of reward if they kill the gatherer.
If going out to gather is risking me to lose the time I have for an evening of play because I lose such a large portion of my stuff / time; then why bother at all?
- as someone with a full time job looking for a game to spend a lot of time in, if a majority of that time will be lost to being ganked for wanting to go into professions, I won't gather. I will be part of the group hunting them instead. It seems much more profitable and doesn't risk losing all of my time.