Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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.
Comments
And I'm confident that I can Stealth past AI and sufficiently avoid combat with AI as I explore areas.
For the most part, I can explore the areas I want to explore without being concerned much about AI.
Eventually, I should be able to make it through any dungeon I wish to explore... if it's just AI.
That's not really possible with Human player characters.
Human player characters do not have a tether, for instance.
And... it's not really about whether or not I defeat the would-be PKer.
The issue is that I don't want to be involved in PvP when all I really want to do is explore and possibly gather.
And, when I'm exploring somewhere and some asshat PKer on a PvP-Optional server tells me, "Why are you here and flagged for PvP if you don't want to PvP??!!" I rage-quit and move to a PvE-Only server. Even though I like PvP-sometimes.
I really don't like playing on the same servers as PvPers, but...
Supposedly, Corruption is supposed to make that feel OK.
And I'm open-minded enough to say..."OK. Let's see..."
But, permanent zones with no Corruption is an automatic deal-breaker for me.
That's really more of a hardcore v casual thing.
I am a casual challenge, non-competitive player.
I sometimes like PvP to defend a town (or Caravan) for about 1 hour of an 8 hour play session.
After that hour, I'm going to want to spend the rest of my time exploring, maybe gathering, maybe hunting some mobs. And, Corruption would have to be enough of a deterrent for PKing that I am rarely PKed during that 7 hour period where I am not in the mood for PvP.
Has nothing to do with defeat and everything to do with other players forcing me into a mode of gameplay I'm not in the mood for. Doesn't matter to me whether I win or lose the PvP battle.
You know... other players cannot make me Craft when I don't want to, so they should not be able to make me PvP when I don't want to.
You guys feed the definition of hypocrisy from multiple fronts. You have the trench, you're dug in. Where can this go? All the moving parts are there, set plainly before your eyes.
Why would Ashes fail with open sea combatant flagged pvp?
All I'm telling you is that as a heavy PvP player, I am less likely to decide to finally play this game because of that Open Sea Combatant Flagged PvP.
You can just go 'well, you leaving doesn't mean anything, game will still definitely succeed'. Who knows.
You just can't go 'you'd understand if you did more PvP!' because basically all I do is PvP.
Get it?
- some asshat PKer on a PvP-Optional server tells me, "Why are you here and flagged for PvP if you don't want to PvP??!!" I rage-quit
You do not have to read the chat.
So if tether is removed from the NPCs, you will not play the game?
You seem to expect NPCs to be dumbed-down, with short sight, loosing interest if you move far enough because that is how the tradition in such games is.
Would it be ok if you get good invisibility to some reasonable distance, similar to what NPCs detect?
Maybe there will be fog on the sea. Also some areas might be under permanent or long control by alliances.
And when battles happen, small ships further away might be ignored.
- I sometimes like PvP to defend a town (or Caravan) for about 1 hour of an 8 hour play session.
That one hour might be enough to cross the ocean and visit places. Also is enough to play as a support character in a team which do not need you to be in top shape. There will be other players like you too.
Wait for that PvP hour mood to come and only then go into the ocean. And even then, it can happen that you see no battle at all. You ended up associating negative feelings with such events because you went there when you was not prepared. And now even the possibility that it could happen (even if that 1 hour PvP mood comes) it bothers you. You can undo that if you try.
Your bigger problem might be the friends who do not wait and pull you into pvp zones when you are not ready.
I understand having concerns... i guess i find it amazing that folks are willing to decide to NOT PLAY before we even see what it looks like and what happens. We have at least a year and a half of alpha 2 and the betas to let things settle in. I am very much in support of "I have concerns, lets see how it plays out"... just not, I read a thing which i interpret to mean something and I WILL NOT PLAY.
Seems dumb.
If players can successfully get to the end of ANY dungeon in AoC solo using stealth and avoiding combat the entire time... I will rage quit.
Really? "Based on the clear statements of design intent this game, as it is now, is not for me." Is that that weird? Sure they can completely change what kind of game they're building. Sure they can decide to go back on core gameplay elements. But if they're clear about what they're going to build, and you don't like THAT? Why the hell would you go "Oh, well maybe this time I WILL like these things I always hate"?
I get "not being sure of the details", but those people aren't talking about the DETAILS. They're talking about the clear statements. The ones who ARE talking about the details tend to say "I hope it changes, but if it stays this way, I won't play."
If you have any breadth of experience, and know anything about yourself, you'll know at least SOME of your personal deal-breakers. You just have to check whether those are core aspects of Ashes of Creation.
Intrepid... please refund this persons money and cancel their account. They clearly feel you have betrayed them in a meaningful way.
What even is this post...?
lol, not me dude.
But the idea of "players are so stupid they have no idea what they want" is just too ridiculous to let slide.
But, in this case, you are right since I also don't have to play the game.
Pretty much.
Once AI is indistinguishable from Human players, I will stop playing MMORPGs wit that level of AI.
AI is already dumbed-down. You might not be aware of that.
I don't understand the question.
I don't care if there is fog or not.
What I care about is there being a zone where I'm auto-flagged as a Combatant.
It's going to be longer than one hour to explore the Open Seas. People can cross the Open Seas via fast travel.
"Crossing" the Open Seas is not my issue.
Playing as a support character does not allow me to explore the Open Seas as a Non-Combatant, so that is irrelevant.
That would already be covered with Naval Caravans, but becomes moot with a permanent auto-flag zone.
Easier to just not play a game that has a deal-breaker mechanic.
I don’t know what you mean by bothered.
I don’t like the taste of coffee.
If you say you’re going to bring me a hot beverage, I will probably say, “OK. As long as it’s not coffee.”
“Oh. It’s different than coffee.”
There should be no surprise that you say, “Well, actually it is coffee,” I reply, “Oh. No. Thanks. I don’t like coffee.” And refuse to drink it.
Not drinking the coffee does it mean that I’m bothered. I’m just refusing to partake in something I don’t like.
And, yeah, at that point, I might also be like, “Yep. I’m good. You don’t need to bring me anything to drink.”
What??
Point me to one PvP enabled game where "respect" for other players was a thing players encountered regularly.
Hell, point me to any corner of the internet where this is the case.
Even though the ocean based system is what I expected to happen, most people didn't. This amounts to a change to the game to most people. To someone that was excited about naval content in Ashes, it amounts to a massive change - essentially rendering the game completely different to what they had envisioned.
When you consider the amount of time someone like Dygz has put in to the community (posting here, arguing here, answering questions, podcasts etc), and the money put in to the game already, to have such a drastic change to what he assumed the game to be after 5 years of being in the community is not something that should have happened.
Talking about people respecting each other in the face of that is tone deaf - and that is being generous (there are much worse things that it could be called).
How about, instead of Intrepid telling the community to respect each other, Intrepid starts respecting its community?
Announcements like this SHOULD NOT happen when this games community has been active as long as it has.
There is no excuse for it, and it is setting the bar for disrespect among the community - I mean, if the developer doesnt respect players, why would players respect players?
Nah, it would have been better if it was a part of the kickstarter.
I mean, naval content was a stretch goal of the kickstarter - it being all PvP all the time should have been mentioned there.
Edit to add; dont get me wrong, I assumed this would be the case. However, something as major as this (the corruption system not functioning in conjunction with an entire sphere of gameplay that will take up potentially half of the game world's surface area) shouldnt rely on assumptions.
Just as the Apocalypse allegedly showed that Intrepid had big backend problems for their planned combat, some kind of internal extensive testing of naval battles could've shown that only ffa would probably work. And that testing was only done somewhat recently because naval battles were the latest thing to develop.
I'm not justifying the change itself or saying that Intrepid were completely in the right, but I could definitely see ways of how the development could've gone in the direction I described and the only choices were either the one we got or no naval pvp at all (or at least a super trashy one). And the change that we've got is way closer to AoC's design than no pvp.
If this is the case, what you dont do is come to the forum telling posters to respect each other.
You come here and say "oops, our bad, naval content is not going to be what many of you thought it would, and these are the reasons for that...".
That is how you show your community respect, and how you get them to then treat each other with respect.
I mean, at this point in development it simply should not happen. Anything that could force this large of a change (working on your assumption that it is a change, rather than my assumption that it was always the intention) should have been considered by now.
While unexpected things can and will come up in development, it is still absolutely a failure on Intrepids part. The further you get in to development, the less of this kind of thing should happen - and the bigger a fuckup it is when it does happen.
The problem with THIS one is that it is BORDERLINE impossible for it to be true for this specific case, I think.
In terms of straight up DESIGN, if 'the moment you leave the land via ship, this starts' could lead to someone thinking 'yeah this might be a system requirement'. But as many posters pointed out, it doesn't happen. You CAN still have entirely Naval battles with Corruption.
Any 'issues with Corruption' that would have happened in Open Seas will happen in Coastal waters. If anything I care more about them there because defending/blockading a Harbor is much more my gameplay style than 'sailing out to sea for whatever is out there'.
This example is not good enough. If you don't like the taste of coffee, why would you drink coffee "1 hour of an 8 hour work session".?
And then later come and tell that this is a deal breaker.
But at the same time you say the change does not bother you?
I am trying to show you that there are ways you can still achieve your target of exploring those parts even if you don't like 100% of the time to pvp.
But you are falling back to a certain stance.
The way you argument is not so much about your possibility to get or not to explore those parts of the world but is about a principle the game broke, which you follow religiously.
I would not be surprised if you even invested in this game like you did, just to be able to enforce those principles to be followed and be able to do what you do now, if they change their mind.
Because is somehow related to the human element behind it and intentions of those humans rather than consequences which can happen with NPCs too, if they are too difficult beyond your skill.
That's why you like to use words like "murder" instead of "kill" and see the process as a teleport back to a re-spawn point.
just out of curiosity.
1- what do you do after you completely explore a map in a game?
2- if you like gathering, why is it different if you gather t5 mats or t1 mats? since t1 mats will still be useful, you can gather t1 mats and sell them to buy t5 mats, at basically no risk of someone killing you in a low level area, even a high level player since he wont be able to cleanse the corruption killing low level monsters. at the end of the day, you are pressing E on a game object, wether it is an iron ore, silver ore, a tree, a plant, etc.
3- what do you do if you are trying to kill a monster and another player starts healing the monster or buffing it? or aggroing it and resetting it? how do you deal with that in a pve server?
4- what do you do if you are trying to gather some stuff and another player mob drops you and kills you or interrupts your gathering and you can never finish mining the ore or harvest the plant? how do you deal with that in a pve server.
5- why does it matter if the open seas are auto flagged? you can still explore them with your guildmates, friends, etc. you probably wont be attacked too much since other players might not want to get their ship damaged. you could also stay near the shore in the pve area and just buy whatever loot you arent getting from the open seas from another player. or are you planning to just sail all day? then you wouldnt be able to do other content.
I'm going to assume you are a PvP player, because you seem to have totally missed the entiure point of playing a game in this post.
Basically, your post here amounts to "why do you care about playing the game, why not just buy the stuff you would play the game to get?".
i do both, pvp and pve. i just wanted to know about his experience.
also, it only makes sense that if you cant farm 1 resource, you farm another one, sell it and buy whatever you need. i never said dont play the game, you are still playing the game. you are just in a different area???
ok so what would you do if you log in to play in a pve server or game, and you want to farm orchalcum ore, but theres only a few nodes since its a t5 resource and theres like 34757455 players camping each node respawn. would you stay there and get 1 node every 10 mins or go farm another resource, sell it and buy the orichalcum?
If you are going to give a hypothetical, give one that is at least reasonable, ideally even plausible.
I'm going to go on record though as saying I don't think you have played much in the way of PvE games. This is because you are doing the thing that all PvP players do - assuming PvE is just PvP but without the ability to attack other players.
In a PvE game, developers don't just put resources in the game like that and leave players to fight over them (at least, not good developers).
what do you even mean by that? so you are telling me if you want to acquire an item(s) that costs 10,000, but it will take you 30 hours to farm, and you have the option to farm 1000 per hour or 4000 per hour gathering something else, you would still go for the 30 hours farm? thats not even a hypothetical scenario, thats very common in mmorpg. you want to try and farm what gives you the most gold per hour, not the least gold per hour. i dont know of any player who would even pick the 1000 hour route, given he knows about the 4000 per hours route..
this has nothing to do with developers being good or not. you can make a pve game where there is a limited availability of resources and players can race each other to see who can build something faster or gather more resources in a period of time etc. pve, pvp and pvpve games can be either competitive, cooperative or both.
Indeed, that is another way of pvp. Camping bosses which respawn on a timer, trying to get their drops before other players and pulling mobs onto other participants to be overwhelmed during fight.
When the game isolates all interferences from other players, it does not matter anymore if the fight is in a private instance or in open world.
Fight becomes more deterministic while the risk vs reward aspect is tuned down.
Whatever interference happens, some players will call it griefing.
This group of mobs has 3 spawn location in the entire game. Literally every mage on the server would be trying to get this recipe for themselves.
And there's several examples for this kind of interaction. Bosses are controlled by bigger guilds or have fucked up respawn times and mobs are so sought after that you'd have to fight dozens of players to even get a chance to get the loot from the mob, let alone dropping the recipe itself.
You'll obviously just call this bad design, but that's a real example of what Depraved was talking about.
What do you mean by that?
The above post literally has nothing at all to do with the scenario you presented.
For reference, this is the scenario you presented Now, what you say in your original hypothetical is not the same as what you are saying in the above post.
and then you kill so many punishments that you level up and the mobs are blue now and wont drop anything ahhaha
but guess what? you can go farm majestic and trade the recipe for the dc gloves and some gold, promoting player interaction. farming somethign else and trading promotes player interaction and commerce, but most people dont get that since they play the "solo" mmorpg type of game
Now, since the original question was "what would you do kn a PvE server if...", I'll reiterate my same point.
I would stop playing a game with shit developers.
Once again, that kind of thing can work in a PvP game. In a PvE game, however, developers need to be better.
That scenario in a PvE game would see that PvE game fail. Immediately.
Those goes back to what I said in the other thread - people that have only really played PvP simply do not understand PvE. Of course you aren't going to enjoy it if you dont understand it.
PvE at its core is far more complex than PvP. It has to be. Developers of games that rely on PvP use PvP for challenge and as a restriction. Your above example is such a case.
PvE developers have to provide that challenge for players, and have to come up with that reateuction. This REQUIEWS the game and its content to be more complex. Not just on an encounter basis, but in the structure of where mobs are placed, mob spawns, quest design, everything.
So again, in the above situation, I would simply stop playing the game because the developers simply have no idea what they are doing, they are developing the wrong type of content for the game they have (which we have established in this hypothetical question is PvE).