This was very fun, thanks for having me on!

To be clear, I think PvP in cities could be fun. It’s not without its downsides though. Looking forward to testing it in a few months with you guys! Thanks again to Grapplr for joining me!

That Wendy's guy is going places

DUDE that menu interrupt edit was PEAK. I had a combo chuckle right after the metal band in the Denny’s . Great vid 🤟🏻

I like that cities can have fights in them. If you don’t let that happen then players will just sprint straight to them once a potential PvP threat appears and hide until it’s gone. There’s no hiding now - which is how it should be in a risky world.

In Dragon's Dogma 2, at night it is very dark. Torchlight is swallowed up by the gloom. Skeletons and zombies rise up out of the road. Ironically, in DD2 you seek the safety of towns. But In AoC nighttime could be when PvP is enabled in towns.

Finally someone brings up PVP in city limits. I hate this concept. My sentiments were echoed exactly, you want a zone where you can chill. I don't want to have to log out when I go to the restroom....

You bring up some good points. I look forward to testing this in Alpha 2

Lol, too much whataboutism for me to agree with the last point. I think being able to PvP at freeholds and in cities is good gameplay design, and making the house in your freehold the safe zone is much more immersive than having a plot of land where no one can touch you. I agree that there needs to be some sort of place where you can relax without being preyed on, but the safety of the citizens should be as much as possible community-driven and not enforced by Intrepid.

I believe they changed the safe space to just your home in a freehold, because gaining xp was one way to reduce corruption. You could go to gank town and return to your freehold to process corruption away. Plus, a bounty hunter showing up at your freehold is great imagery!

Can't wait brother, time is approaching to test!

I am confused about two things: 1. I thought the thing that was going to set AoC apart was fostering a sense of community. PvP in towns does not seem to me to fit with this. 2. Every MMO Guild I've ever been in had group activities at most 14 hours per week. The rest of the time if you came on you were usually solo. That's when you did your gathering resources and crafting. In AoC there's no guild or NPCs to help protect your interests.

I think the upcoming Node Wars stream will tell us their reasoning behind the pvp in node centers. Or, potentially, Steven will say that the direction changed and we now can't attack people in node centers.

Your presentation, in particular the commentary from your guest, reflected the sense of entitlement that has developed in the MMO Community, especially in the last couple of decades. "This is my spot. This is my resource route. I was here first." This entitlement does not actually exist. In a PvX game, this is especially true. No player has any innate right to any particular play style, location, resource, or camp. A player can make use of these game elements only so long as they can defend their possession. That being said, I believe that if you analyze the entire scope of pronouncements on Corruption and PvP in AoC, in particular those from the creative director, you will find that the clear goal is to suppress non-consensual PvP to the point where it is essentially non-existent, given that Intrepid's definition of non-consensual is "non-resisting".

Not trying to defend albion here, just adding more info to the convo and possibly some light to interesting mechanics that AOC could implement Albion to me doesn't feel like "just a Zerg fest". Content these days is mostly zone based so you can pick and choose what type of content you are interested in. Not just that but it also has tons of anti-zerg mechanics. Some examples of PvP content: Mists: Maps specific for either Solos or Duos Corrupted dungeons: PvPvE dungeons 1v1s(soft item power capped) Hellgates: "enclosed" maps for 5v5, 10v10s(soft ip capped) Arenas: 5v5s (soft ip capped) Ava Roads: 1 to 7 players (in theory) portals to these maps have maximum 7 "charges" but they recharge every few minutes Faction warfare: It's basically another flagging system, players from other factions are PvP flagged for you. It's Open world content so it can be zergy. Outlands Territory Wars, Outposts/Castles, Objectives in general: Guilds/Large groups/ZvZ (Zergs) etc. Some anti-zerg mechanics: Healing sickness: Debuff that decreases Healing received, scales depending on how many different sources healed you. Resilience: The higher the number of players that hit you, the higher your pvp resistance becomes. Aoe Escalation: Damage scales up depending on how many players you hit with a single skill. Dissaray(only in black zone(?)): Debuff that decreases your CC and Damage applied based on how many allied players(guild + alliance) are in the same map as you. Debuff kicks in at 21 players. There's potential for you to win outnumbered fights in that game.

Seeing stormwind under attack and the two massive guild raid groups crashing out in the front gates as a low level alliance player visiting stormwind the first time was epic. I think having some auto defence system like guards and walls from city raids and also regular guards like wow the wow guards were pretty good enough to keep enemy players away from invading too much but still if youre in the most epic gear a player can still fight if he has a few guards on him he will die for sure but he can mess some stuff up a little bit

During A2 i think the Pking could be a little brutal until nerfed but with a full map there is A LOT of ground to cover. Hypothetically staying away from the largest nodes would drop your chances of getting ganked by groups tremendously

dude, guards. City needs guards, not no-pvp zone. Someone flags? insta death by a guard. Free land is... eh. dunno

That's some good info there, I had completely missed the part about greens being immune to CC.

And here I thought the towns/cities were PVP sanctuaries (unless in a war, of course). Agreed, they should be.

Why would anyone fight back when they could punish the pvp aggressor more by just standing there and letting them kill them? I think everyone should get one free kill without penalty on a like a 2-4 hr cooldown . Otherwise, world pvp is NOT going to happen.

Ooooo i didnt realize the pvp bounds got changed for freeholds 🤔🤔🤔 This actually might make some players prefer and chase node housing more than freehold housing due to there being more risk being out on the land further away from the city and populations protection

Agreed, I don't want to fight in a zone that has nothing to compete for. I enjoy my chill time.

My instinctive reaction to this is, "you mean the wider world+plus ocean outside of towns isnt enough space for pvp activities?" Feels a bit much that i cant go take a shit in peace without having to worry about logging off. BUT on the other hand i am like "Fine, but if thats the case bring in the Archeage style player run court system where we can prosecute and sentence these pkers to enforce the law. Force them to work in penal colonies and harvest resources for the node with NO forms of compensation." Mind you the player would need to be ACTIVE during their sentence in order to be released. None of that afk bullshit. I could live with these terms.

On the node resource wars, Steven went on to say that mayors could put in node policies to help bolster a resource's health. Not what I wanted, but there is recourse to resource griefing. The problem with balancing corruption to make it ok to kill bots is that the corruption we'd want granted by killing a bot would be minimal or non-existant. Whereas the corruption for killing a low leveled player is balanced to he much higher. You mentioned Albion and full loot PvP, but their gearing system is vastly different from whats intended for Ashes. Bots are also rampant in Albion despite the full loot pvp rules. I definitely want players to be able to go corrupt, get a lot of high tier gatherables off someone, and then be able to work off the corruption and essentially win that encounter. If corruption is too harsh then they might as well turn open world PvP off.

Player Collision on in Nodes is definitely a potential issue IMO. I hated it in Archeage, and Ashes is going to have a lot more players than Archeage. I also agree that there really isn't much reason to have PVP on in Nodes. Also, Grapplr needs to turn down the sensual a little bit, he's making us all look bad

No shot unwanted PvP on freeholds and in towns makes it to launch

Having pvp free player hubs just creates this cat and mouse game of running in and out of town while fighting. "I'm immune now haha you're bad". Now they can't hide and talk their shit lol. I don't like all the rules. I've been dealing with pvp rules a lot lately and it's honestly a headache. Just perfect the corruption system and let it do its job. And if the game doesn't do well then we will have our answer about what gamers really want. Great video man.

I don't recall ever hearing answers to these questions: If I attack a player, am I only Purple only to my victim, or am I Purple to all? (I assume the former) Does every assailant gain corruption, or just the one dealing the finishing blow? If so, is it split % by damage, or just full corruption to all? For example; There's an 8 vs 8 situation. We murder them all, none of them fight back. If we each kill 1 player, each of us receives 1 kills worth of corruption. What if each of us damages all of them, with AoE attacks? Do each of us get 8 kills of corruption? Does death cure corruption? Why not just let my friends "Cure" me? There is only one thing we can be certain of... The PvP system will be exploited, one way or another. As for gathering; You're in My spot... Run

possibly make zones that have full pvp on like an area of a map has rare or plentiful resources but its in a full pvp zone, you can chose to avoid it but if you jump in you could get some great resources. this creates a focal point for players to funnel in for a reward and gives both pve players and pvp players their reward. Have the zones change every few days or hours so it keeps the locations and resources new and changes the pvp environment

i look forward to your videos almost as much as Alpha-2 ! I'm very used to gank pvp as i have played Eve Online and other MMO's that are pure PvP.

"High mobility class" group of 2 or 3 with mounts using mount combat skills in PvP would like to lul at this. IF that doesn't convince you, they'll just outrun ahead of you and cut you off.

Ultimate Online was pvp worldwide, but guards in towns would smack you if you started anything in town. However, once Trommel (spelling??) came around (a pve mirror world) Felucia (pvp world) pretty much died. It will be interesting to see how AoC goes.

Good video! Couldn’t we do like a young guns Regulators group for land management?

how big is taking node from people? if im comparing this to albion is this probably likes contesting .4 nodes? they can fetch quite some money so they often contested but nodes while contested, are not really a big deal

I remember having to yell "GUARDS" in UO cities just to keep from being PK'd or robbed by a thief. However, if you were part of an enemy guild or faction then yeah PVP in cities was expected.

I'm definitely quite curious how this will all play out once Alpha 2 is live. On the one hand, I enjoy the real-life similarities between a city or freehold not being a safe place from PvP in game; where there are nefarious actors in real life, there will be in the game. On the other hand, it's a video game, and video games over time have set their own expectations of where safe places are over time, even in the most PvP-focused games. Griefing is an aspect of video games that resembles real life harassment, and I think the devs will have to walk a fine line between what the player base will accept as fair and what their vision for the game becomes through testing. I'd like to see and experience what it is like for PvP to be allowed in cities and freeholds, if even for a short amount of time. The kind of community and culture that'll create sounds like an interesting prospect for sure. But I don't want Intrepid to lose a portion of their player base / community by sticking to their vision too hard, as I'd hate to see an ambitious game like this lose support from the player base. Needless to say, great video as always! You do such a good job of bringing much brain food to the proverbial copium feast that is AoC content, and always inspire me to think further into the different aspects of the game we will see once Alpha 2 is live. I'd love to get a chance to explore the game together in a few months once we're all in the game. I for one think you'd have an awesome in-game community if you put a guild together or something like that. Looking forward to your next video mate, cheers!

I wonder if they could have an opt out of Corruption mode.. almost like an alternate PvP that allows you to kill or be killed, by anyone else "flagged", without any consequence? Of course while still maintaining the corruption system for anyone you kill that isnt flagged. That way, those of us who just want to go out and PvP but not have to worry about working off corruption can do so, promoting those who actually want a challenging PvP experience, rather than ganking lower level, under geared people or those just looking to gather? I'm not sure if you keep they would need to keep the damage dampening on or off in those cases..? I could see teams of players going out into the world, doing their thing but running across other players or groups that they see as "flagged" (sorry, dont know what else to call it) and having skirmishes break out between the two groups. Almost like a "build your own battle ground" anywhere in the world. Maybe have it only togglable in a town or some specific building (a barracks, perhaps?), so that you cant just toggle it on and off when out in the world to benefit you, situationally. Perhaps have a decently long cooldown, for both turning it off and on, so you cant game the system? It could even be like a "Soldier Mode", that opting into it allows you to kill/be killed by players who are residence in an opposing node with no penalty (who are also flagged). And once opted in, you are flagged towards those players until either node is destroyed? Downgraded? Metropolis status achieved or Metropolis successfully sieged? I'm not sure, but I bet Intrepid could figure out something cool! Overworld PvP may happen like this anyway, as its yet to be seen what the PvP dynamic will be, because of corruption. But I think it could be a good way to promote PvP if its seldom seen, outside caravans or sieges. Idk if you've played Albion or not (if you have, then maybe you've had a different experience or opinion then me and thats cool), but I think Albion is still a game because you can purchase gear with IRL money. There isnt actually a punishment, because you can spend a few bucks to get the gear back. I liked Albion, but the fact that the game basically is created in a way that 90% of people who are in full loot pvp zones are buying their gear back with real cash, makes it stupid as hell. Bad/greedy dev design, imo. Sorry for wall of text.. lol

Hmmm isnt there a delay when a red logs out ? Like they cant just use a get out of Verra instantly card ? They have to wait 30s or so ?

If not for this PVP system (with expected fixes and updates before release) I wouldn't even consider playing AOC. All the latest MMOs I quit because of "snowflake" PVP setup. NW was the worst when it comes to PVP. Full opt in/out system is a travesty.

I think Greens are immune to AoE and CC. I'm for a safe zone in town too. Thanks for the warning at the end :)

You can afk in your own house, freeholds are limited in the open world and i think it should be fair that people can come and fight you off for it. Also, i've been playing albion online ever since release, the full-loot combat that scares people is only at the beginning, once you start realizing the risk-vs-rewards attached to it it becomes addicting. That being said, AoC will have only partial full loot unless ur corrupted, you will only drop resources from your inventory so i dont think it will be that bad as people claim it to be. New world used to be full loot then they did a 360 on it and removed everything about the rewards from pvp, that turned the game into a stale mmo very quickly, the economy was ruined very fast and overall from the startin 1m concurrent player we have what? 10k? tops. Full loot/ganking and risk-vs rewards is what drive mmos to last longer, they offer more ways to play the game and it gives longevity cause every open pvp encounter is always different. that's my 2 cents anyway

This game is not for everyone.

New Copium Clinic just dropped! Poggers! GrappLr had some solid points, I agree on most. I like the CC immunity for non-combatants. When you're the non-combatant you might escape most fights when you're being attacked, but you still lost your spot (gathering/mob-farming/whatever). It would be your choice to fight over the spot or let yourself be chased away. I agree with safe zones in nodes. I'd prefer it to be a nice place where you can chat and not worry about the dangers of the big bad world. Maybe they don't want the 'edge' of the node to feel like some kind of danger barrier you're crossing, like the wilderness in Runescape. I'm fine with either choices on these topics at the end of the day.

I agree pvp in cities is kind of overkill. And im a huge open world random pvp player. But like, this is a pvp focused game. My biggest issue with pve players who are against pvp/never pvp, is that they come to pvp focused games and they whine and cry and complain until things get changed to suit them. Stop it. There are tons of pve focused mmos where pvp takes a back seat. Its happened with bdo. It happend with new world, which basically ruined the game because we got a game that was mid at both pvp and pve. And some people like to say pvp focused mmos dont do well but thats not true. A lot of them dont but imo its because of other reasons. Archeage didnt fail because it was pvp focused, it failed because of p2w, really bad changes, and a really bad dev team. Mortal online doesnt have a 100 player pop because its a pvp game, its like that because its a super niche, super convoluted, experience that only appeals to certain types of players. I honestly had hoped/hope they will have some safe zones. I liked how archeage had the care bear zones and the pvp zones, and zones that would go in and out of war. If you are going to have sieges on cities thats fine, but i deff dont think it should be pvp all the time. So ya, i do agree with the premise i just hope if they change things it doesnt get changed too far in the other direction because of people who dont want a pvp game.

*I think the level of the Node should matter when it comes to PvP.* *Any Lv.4 Node and above, or Any Node with a Bounty Hunter Guild inside, there should be no PvP within it's walls.* *Every player Shop should be immune to PvP! Node, Dungeon, location doesn't matter. Completely immune to PvP!*

Coming from MO2, it would be nice with somewhere in the game world where I can unclench

I missed this kind of videos

Thank you doc

I think they want all progression in the game to have at least some risk associated with it. Even farming your crops on a freehold or queing up wood processing in town. Without it a pure processor could get to grandmaster without ever experiencing risk once in the game. I admit it does seem a bit strange to have your house safe but not freehold. Just make sure you afk in your house I guess. I don't know about towns being non-pvp. I think there could be enough interesting gameplay to be worth it. Killing someone in town should be the highest risk pvp possible though. I would want to see a solid guard system to fight back. If someone smacks your back while queing up a station, I want to see npcs that are actually a threat jump in. It also opens the possibility of raiding a town, which I find intriguing. Might be too much though, we'll see. I'm sure they will adapt if necessary. The CC thing is a legit point. I was thinking about making an escape artist gatherer build at some point. Didn't even think about how OP that would be if I can't be CC'ed.

Why are all new ideas or implementation "problems". You Can be CCed, but you first must establish combat. A fireball first, then a cc will work fine. You can't just cc a player and let the mobs kill them without attacking.

As someone who played Lineage 2 for years I will say this, I will do this and abuse the system Steven created if it benefits my/my guild or party economically etc. None of Steven supposed "fixes" regarding PKing is fixing abusing behavior it only stop pure PKers from going into low level zones and massacre everybody. However, the flag (aka corruption) system can be used against players by baiting to into PKing players who comes into your spot to hinder your parties progress which forces either 1. you kill that player(s) or 2. leave the spot. If you do option 1. you can now bait getting alt/alt party killed when hiding near by with mains to gain massive PVP advantage since now you can freely targer Red player to gain resources they farmed. If you took option 2. it basically stops you from doing content you wanted to do. But issue is that Steven claims that such things wont exist and "white knights" are abusing players verbally who tries to point it out. Often the way Steven talks tries to satisfy as wider playersbase as possible, but when you do that you end up satisfying no one. Because of this reason all the hype towards AoC for me is gone now. Ashes's community has no idea how OWPVP/PK game works and lives in their bubbles and the moment it will explode it will be too late to change things which will lead into death of the game.

why is grapplrs hairline so good?

Lineage 2 wasnt that bad for PK.

The node proper itself should definitely be a no PvP zone. Hopefully that is a change made during A2.

PVP is not a good idea in an mmo, most popular game have put it in a box somewhere where you can try it, but most of the time it make no sens. If you have a trinity... an Healer VS a DPS, how can this match exist... The healer have no way to survive a machine made to kill, if you make the healer capable of overhealer damage... Then what happen healer become god? If you make healer capable of healing a group of people again a boss, then again one person how much heal can they do? If you have a game like Albion where PVP is pretty much the only thing to do, yes it's ok, no healer no trinity... every character can be balance, but when you have class in a trinity... How can a DPS kill a tank? a Tank that can sustain a boss in PVE? Or Worst, if you lower the damage a tank can do, how can he kill an healer now? So you balance the game for what PVP or PVE... To have fun healer need to be godly in PVE and tank need to be able to take everything a boss send to him.... But in PVP. a tank need to be weak enough so a DPS can kill him and a healer need to be able to send damage and heal just so he can survive a dps but not good enough to overheal everything...

For me the always on PVP is just a hard stop. I am not interested in having the limited amount of time I have to enjoy myself in a game totally destroyed because someone else thinks its fun to do so.

I think the whole freehold should be off limits. In cities, you start a fight insta kill from the guards, if they are near you. Back alleys, that's a different story altogether. I would go.so far to say if your corrupted enter a city guards kill on site. One of your streams or someobodies they were saying, they were going to kill you just to see what you have...sorry, that is just so far foreign to me i cant even wrap my head around it. Anywho, that's what we have alpha2 for eh? On a side note I am a HUGE LOTR fan and Rings of Power should be destroyed. Its nothing but a dumpster fire, and fan fiction at its worst. I dont hate many thing's, but i absolutely HATE and DESPISE the Rings of Power. Have you seen they are going to put Tom Bombadil in this season? Not even in his home either....rocky lanscape...AND they are saying him and Goldberry are actually Ungoliant and Melkor paying servituude for their crimes against the world....i just cnat man...i just can't.

There biggest problem will be ppl who don't want to pvp attacking mobs and players jumping in front of those skill shots so it flags them for pvp. Now they can be killed without corruption. Which I'm fine with because I will be doing this to grief stupid players.