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The main issue with corruption being applied in the first kill is the certainty for the other player that you'll get corrupted if you kill them. This gives them complete safety and even an advantage in dying to get you corrupted.

This is the where we disagree. They don't have "complete" safety. Nor is dying an advantage. 99% of fights are one person getting jumped by 2 or 3 others and it's normally when they're half health after a fight with a mob to get a material node. "Lessening" corruption penalties will increase this to the nth degree. Corruption has to be a stiff penalty or it's meaningless. Can it be adjust to make more sense and encourage more meaningful PvP interactions, of course. I think we agree that it needs to be adjust and mostly how it should be. But fostering a environment that encourages random ganking is just going to make people quit.

I think lawless zones should be dynamic at launch, a Node should be able to grow and bring "law/justice" to a zone it's near if it's influence is great enough. This would add the idea of a changing world. Lawless zones should exist on land masses if it's outside the influence of the closest Node. What they decide to do probably isn't even known to them right now. Which makes sense, let see where it goes and let our voices known. It does appear they listen.... slowly.... took too long to change the gathering

Aside from the adjustment of corruption to make it more meaningful. There needs to be a Node reputation system. Killing someone of Node A in a Node A area it should drop your reputation of that Node to the point where you're an outlaw to that Node and it's guards are hostel to you, and you won't be able to use its facilities, until your reputation is repaired or the Node is destroyed. Once hostel with that Node you'd show as red (orange, or whatever) to members of that Node. But killing a member of Node A while they're at your Node's area wouldn't cause a reputation loss with Node A. There's tons of adjustments you can make from something like this. They could apply this same mechanic to the Religion system as well which would make for some really interesting interactions. You could be faced with an Enemy Node player but they're of the same Religion so they show up as yellow, and you can choose to align with your Node or Relgion at that point. Could be really fun in some situations. I'd argue this would be enough alone and corruption wouldn't even really be needed in its current state.

Corruption alone will never be enough to balance it, not matter how it's adjusted. The game is too ganky right now and it's not fun nor do I really expect it to be fun atm. I know we're testing and not all of this is the focus, but I can only judge it on what it is not what someone dreams it to be.

Imnotkio wrote: »

When you don't have players going corrupt on the first kill, you have the uncertainty of corruption. This means players have much less to gain by allowing them to kill you. Without this certainty, dying a person is not the best outcome, and fighting to survive and fighting back are your best options. This essentially removes all the issues of players reverse griefing and allows the flagging system to be properly used in scenarios like contesting POIs, fighting for resources, and even for events like world bosses, things that intrepid claimed they want but it's pretty much not occurring at all.

A drastic alternative could be this:

• you do get corrupted after your first kill
• but dying to anything other than a BH doesn't remove corruption
• you also don't drop anything on death, unless you were killed by a BH
• mob farming removes corruption
• speed of that removal depends on your PK count
• BHs need to submit PKer's loot to their profession NPC, otherwise they'll lose their job after a few hunts for a long time (this is to avoid "friend BH" bs)
• BHs get rewards from those NPCs based on their success and potentially the power of their targets
• BH profession is an exclusionary one, so it's the only one you can have (this is to prevent "all my friends are BHs" bs)
• there's no timer on corruption - only mob farming and BH deaths

This would increase the number of PKs in the game, but also keep the BHs on a more noble path, where the only reward is the hunt itself and the system-based stuff that you get, rather than pure vigilantism.

I'd personally prefer if PKer's drops always included their victims' items (if there were any) and those would be returned to said victims through the BH system. PKers get to kill people and risk the corruption and the hunt, BHs get to hunt people and have some nice pvp, and victims potentially get their shit back. An all-around win

No fast travel please, current iteration is amazing. It provides a grand scale to the world, prevents zergs from instantly being everywhere and promotes a LoTR style of adventure. It will be even better once the world is fully built because it will allow lots of little communities to exist almost independently, and distance will be a safety net.

They have already commented that at some point there will be a taxi service and thats plenty. Or if an academic node levels up, there will be some sort of fast travel between nodes in its area of influence.

Volgaris wrote: »

I'll agree that corruption shouldn't make you helpless. But the timer to drop corruption should be in the hours not minutes. Killing a non-flagged player one moment then the next going about your non corrupted life the next shouldn't be a thing. The length of corruption should be more of a deterrent than the nerfing effects. I'd also be okay with a 'revenge' kill system that didn't give corruption. If you're killed not flagged you should have a limited time to get a revenge kill that won't give corruption even if they're not flagged.

Lawful zones are to appease the PvE crowd. The Lawless zones are to appease the PvP crowd. In general PvE crowds are bigger and PvP relies on PvE more than PvE relies on PvP. I don't think they mix well in MMOs. Too much difference between playstyles, stats, loadouts, and so. Also they attract different player mindsets which tend to be conflicting. Trying to be fair to both will just everyone feel cheated.

Lawless zones were never an intended feature of the game. They were added as a temporary system to A2 developing zones. When pushed on lawless zones they kept their stance that the only place free of corruption would be the ocean and some islands in the ocean.

Lawless zones are not a reliable solution to any issue because it's not going to be prevalent at launch.

I do agree that corruption should be a lengthy thing. Bounty hunter system for hunting corrupted players exists, but with the current design of losing corruption with 2 kills it's never going to be used. Even if you require a bunch of kills, players will just feed kills to allies and lose corruption.

1. Corruption should be a long endeavor. You get corrupted, you deal with the consequence for at least hours, preferably days. But for that to be possible, either you can't get corrupted on a single kill, or the first tiers of corruption must be very lenient (very low to no chance of gear drops, full material bag drops, slightly increased exp debt). They need to implement a hard to get hard to clean philosophy.

2. To avoid people feeding kills to get rid of corruption, it also needs a timer. It needs a period where no matter how much you die you'll remain corrupted. Along with this, you need to add a character persistent timer like a 3~5 minute countdown that the players need to wait before safely logging out and removing the character from the world.

3. Corrupted players should be allowed to fight back. If the corrupted player gets more corruption by fighting back, there is 0 chance anyone is risking going corrupt, and if they do they will just feed kills/log out to get rid of it. Allowing them to fight back incentivizes them to stay logged in the game to try and clean corruption/ deal with bounty hunters and players who want to kill them.

The main issue with corruption being applied in the first kill is the certainty for the other player that you'll get corrupted if you kill them. This gives them complete safety and even an advantage in dying to get you corrupted. This creates various awkward and unpleasant scenarios of players' corruption baiting, karma bombing, playing purple footsie, and open world PVP basically becomes a pseudo opt-in system. If you want players to kill each other only when there is consent and both go purple, then just create a opt-in flagging system and cut the bullshit (please don't, that's the whole point of this feedback).

When you don't have players going corrupt on the first kill, you have the uncertainty of corruption. This means players have much less to gain by allowing them to kill you. Without this certainty, dying a person is not the best outcome, and fighting to survive and fighting back are your best options. This essentially removes all the issues of players reverse griefing and allows the flagging system to be properly used in scenarios like contesting POIs, fighting for resources, and even for events like world bosses, things that intrepid claimed they want but it's pretty much not occurring at all.

Corruption is a tool to deter grief. Griefing is the repeated targeted harassment of a player or group. A single kill is not considered griefing. The corruption system should not be used to stop players from committing isolated murders.