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
Guild Wars
- Not part of the flagging system, just to each other
- There may be objectives, etc
- May have mechanic that allows alliances to war against each other
- Guilds are not limited to warring one guild at a time[9]
- There will be mechanics for surrendering and winning.[10]
http://aocwiki.net/Guilds#Guild_Warslord of sandals has mentioned it many times as being some of the best mmo memories he's had in games. this looks almost identical with a bit of his own flavor it seems. the system works as long as the open world has meaningful content and he keeps instanced BS out of the game where everyone just sits in town waiting for a que to pop...
Let me give you some insight to their purpose and thought:
The ganker ultimately wants to exert his will, power, and skill over other players. He relishes in the degradation and harassment, as it reinforces his self belief of superiority. Outside of verbal daggers in chat, or meta guild tactics, he really only has two avenues to focus that intent. Regular free for all open world pvp, or straight ganking carebears who normally don't flag. Open world is a lot more tougher to rise to their perceived top, due to the fact that EVERYONE is a wolf. But a corruption system pvp is a lot more viable and rewarding for the ganker, because they are wolves with very few other wolves.
Here's the break down of how a ganker wins regardless of corruption:
Their goal is to harass you, loot you, stop you from doing a particular task, or buy them time until their buddies/guildies come to take turns killing you and steal your task objectives. With the above in mind, it doesn't matter if you attack back or not, for the ganker still wins.
You don't attack back, great! They will kill you (objective completed).
You attack back, great! They don't get corruption (objective completed),
and they've also been rewarded with pvp (bonus feels for now getting to exert their might without repercussion) (objective completed).
I like the corruption system and the potential bounty hunter systems, and I look forward to all aspect of pvp, but gankers will always be a thing. It's only in pure pve games that they are hindered, but that would make this game a failure. Bring on the pvp!
If your talkin about soloable elite mobs in the open world, hell yea it should be contested ground! If your not strong enough to defend it find some where else to farm lol. Thats gonna bring lots of fun clan fights i hope.
Not sure how "tagging mobs" will work but the whole corruption system needs more light. If your with your mate and you pk someone that didnt wana fight, you can simply kill each other to get rid of your corruption and get on with it, but if your solo and hafta stop farming and go do a quest to get rid of corruption, thats gonna suck.
Point 2 See the result of point 1. You can stay unflagged but you loose more from it then flagging. So its a judgement call corruption to the attacker and more XP and material loss from you, or take a chance you can beat them and flag.
Point 3 Yes, fighting another player is a judgement call and you can both fight.
Point 4 Trolling: If someone is trolling you harassing you in chat you can report them or slap them on ignore. I assume both those options will be in the game. If you ignore the troll or leave the area they will get bored and go away. Or you can attack them, see fi they flag, if they don't, stop attacking them and back off. Nothing is stopping you from disengaging.
Point 5 Resource Compitition: If someone griefs your resources it once again comes down to personal call. Either engage and see if they choose to also engage. Or go find another resource spot. Player agency doesn't mean you get to force your play style on another player it means you have to make the call. This is much more of a "real" scenario then just being a murderbox simulator that having no consequences can lead to.
Point 6 Duels: If you want to duel someone you do in fact have to step into an arena or offer a challenge, which they can decline. This is historically accurate as well as game system accurate. Most games duels have to be accepted in non-pvp areas. It isn't a duel if your are just ganking in the open PvP areas, that is ganking.
Point 7 Killing Groups: If you want to kill a group of players you engage them in combat. It is up to them to decide if they want to flag and fight you or to not engage in which case you either kill them and get corruption or you disengage and leave. Your agency doesn't over ride their agency and both sides have to make a call. This goes back to risk vs reward. If they think they can take you down they should flag, if you are max level and they are like level 5 you deserve the corruption.
Point 8 "Catering to Carebares": The system isn't catering to "carebares" it is catering to a balanced PvX that is trying to entice PVErs and maybe convert some of them to PvP with mechanics in and to the PvP crowd that aren't looking to get into a game where bullying and camping level 1 zones as a level 50 is tolerated.
Point 9 "Vote with your wallet": Many of us have voted with our wallet and have decided these systems are exactly what we are looking for. Open PvP options with consequences if we decide force an engagement on someone flagged as a non-combatant. No where is it stated that you have to kill a non-combatant if they decide to not engage. Corruption is a choice, it is a choice to keep attacking and killing someone who is clearly not flagging and buying into your combat. One or two attacks is sufficient to see if they are open to flagging and you can exercise some will power to leave them alone if they decide to not flag. Once again it isn't a zero sum "If I attack a non-combatant I have to kill them."
Point 7 "Let PvErs Rot": Since you opened this with an insult I would suggest you follow your own advice, find an game with open PvP without any restrictions and go "rot" in that game. Instead of forcing AoC to drastically change their game plan go play a game that caters to your desire for an open world no consequence murderbox.
Most of your arguments are straw-man arguments. "I can't do X because I might get a penalty." You can engage in any of the scenarios you listed above you just have to have a fall back plan if the other player doesn't wish to engage. It also hinders a number of behavior that has been proven to drive players away like corpse camping, higher levels bullying lower players, and the mentality of some players who wish to use "Its PvP" to bully and make the game un-fun and drive away players as an excuse.
- Seeing a bounty on the map is to easy. Blood trail or highlighting the general area would be OK. Hide and Seek is fun, but if you know where the target is its kinda pointless. Maybe the more corrupt the smaller the area they are shown to be in.
- If a corrupt player kills a more corrupt player they should become less corrupt.
The best pvp on any game was still ultima online prior to the world splitting, second to that Duris text mud. Haven't managed to find anything that rivals the thrill of the chase from those two.
Proky
Players killing non-combatants getting corruption, which then imposes increased and increasing exp/stat penalties for further non-combatant kills.
First of all, why does the player gain "corruption"? The act of murdering of an "innocent" draws the negative energies of Verra into the player, causing them to be "corrupted" due to the evil act committed.
What does this mean? I think the player's physical appearance should be altered based on their level of corruption, i.e. as you draw more of the corrupting energies of Verra into your character, the more you are physically altered. This also impacts your stats/exp, as you are physically/mentally altered by the corrupting energies.
Suggestion: Whenever I think of corruption, I always think of the corruption system of ADoM (don't worry if you haven't played it, but it's a pretty fun rogue-like ascii RPG, though it has been updated with actual graphics now). In that system, as you become more corrupted (through the background corruption of the world, being hit with corrupting attacks, wielding corrupting items etc.), you gain corruptions which each have unique effects on your stats, some are entirely negative, some positive, and some mixed, until you gain too many (18) and your game ends because you turn into a chaos being. ADoM has 35 different corruptions, for example, you grow gills (+ water breathing, -3 Appearance), you become very light (+4 Dexterity, +20 speed, -6 Strength, -6 Toughness, -6 Appearance), or your eyes turn black (+ see invisible, +3 Perception).
How I see this applying to Ashes of Creation: As you become more corrupted, some of your stats receive a boost, say maybe Strength and Mana get a boost (the idea here being you are strengthened by the transformation into a corrupted being and have increased access to magic due as you become more attuned to the mana flow of Verra), but you lose 10% of your max health and exp gain per corruption level (the idea being that the corrupting energy causes damage to your physical tissue and deteriorates your mind/causes gradual insanity), with more corruption levels being awarded based on the level differential (so if you kill a level 1 player as a max level player, you automatically go to max corruption level for example). This gives you a hard cap of 10 corruptions, at which point you are left with 1 health and no exp gain. I also think increasing equipment/inventory drop provides a significant disincentive to killing sprees.
Why I think this works: Stat boosts mean that the consequences of killing non-combatants are not all negative, which provides some benefit to those that decide to engage in that kind of PvP activity and they get to feel powerful. However, the downsides are significant enough that severely corrupted players can be killed by anyone and risk dropping their stuff. Non-combatants are able to engage corrupted players to help purge Verra of their corruption without being considered a combatant. The increasing penalty for level differential means that you need to have a good reason for destroying a low level player, other than just shits n giggles. I was a bit concerned that there would be no way to stop a rampaging player, but I think the increasing HP loss takes care of that.
Alternatives/Tweaks: It may be reasonable to assume that ALL stats increase as corruption increases, however your max HP still drops by 10% corruption level, down to 1HP. That way you become more powerful, but increasingly easy to kill, with the added issue of equipment loss.
I also like the idea of receiving a random corruption for each corruption level you earn, for example you may get +2 STR, +2 DEX and +2 MANA, or maybe +10 STR, -5 MANA, etc. That way if you are intent on murder for the bonuses they bring, you may not get something that you were hoping for, or each time you go on a rampage, the outcome is different as you receive different corruptions.
I'm pretty keen to see how AoC turns out, I like the direction the team at Intrepid is heading.
P.S. First post, so be kind