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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.
Red/PK Guild Loophole?
So I was thinking about the player corruption info listed below and think there could be a serious loophole for people who want to run a Red/PK Guild. According to the bullet point layout player corruption increases upon each non-combatant player killed. With the way this is written it would appear to apply to only at the killing stroke. So if for instance 3 people attack 1 person then whoever lands the final attack would gain the corruption.
So for instance lets say the Red/PK guild wants to just kill lots of people if it does work in this fashion a mob attack could be used with a single character acting as executioner. Also as this character wouldn't need to be high level to be abusive they could keep it's level low to minimize the corruption that is added with each kill as well as more easily cycle the character out for a newly created character once the corruption gets too high.
That said this would only work if corruption is applied to the player who kills another player and not anyone who attacks him. If it is anyone who attacks him then the question would be does it spread the corruption out equally among all attackers, or by the percentage of damage they did, or does it just give each attacking player the full amount of corruption whether they attacked for 10 damage or 500 damage.
Referenced corruption
Player corruption
So for instance lets say the Red/PK guild wants to just kill lots of people if it does work in this fashion a mob attack could be used with a single character acting as executioner. Also as this character wouldn't need to be high level to be abusive they could keep it's level low to minimize the corruption that is added with each kill as well as more easily cycle the character out for a newly created character once the corruption gets too high.
That said this would only work if corruption is applied to the player who kills another player and not anyone who attacks him. If it is anyone who attacks him then the question would be does it spread the corruption out equally among all attackers, or by the percentage of damage they did, or does it just give each attacking player the full amount of corruption whether they attacked for 10 damage or 500 damage.
Referenced corruption
Player corruption
A player’s corruption score increases with each non-combatant player killed.
The wider the level disparity between the players the more corruption will be gained.
The higher the corruption score, the higher drop percentage when the corrupted player is killed (see Player death below).
The higher the corruption score, the more skill and stat dampening applies, until the corrupt player ultimately becomes ineffective at combat.
Corruption is removed through death. Multiple deaths may be necessary to remove all corruption. There may be other mechanics to reduce corruption.
Corruption has a visible effect on a player’s appearance.
A corrupt player’s location is revealed to bounty hunters.
Corruption duration is reduced in military nodes.
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Comments
Most of the time whoever delivers the coup de grâce is the one who suffers the penalty. Eve Online everyone involved in the illegal attack gets assault charges, but who delivers the deathblow takes the largest hit; Archeage everyone who attacks leaves a small bloodstain, he who delivers the deathblow gets the large one.
My opinion is that everyone who engages in the attack should take the full weight of the corruption if the target dies.
Large guilds will absolutely, guaranteed, definitely, without a doubt have a team of corrupted PKers in their ranks. They will be used to enforce whatever the guild wants enforced. They will not care about being corrupted because they will have the outside support of their guild.
You don't move your freehold out of the guild's node when they say? The PK group comes for you.
You don't vote as the guild instructs you? The PK group comes for you.
You kill a member of the PK group? The PK group continues to come for you.
The PKers are so corrupted their stats are terrible? They will just jump off a cliff 20 times and reset their corruption.
One thing is certain: Griefers will be drawn to this game, and they will be better at PvP than 95% of all players. The best ones will have the full backing of large powerful guilds controlling metro nodes, and there's not a thing casual players will be able to do about it.
Hopefully the devs have some ideas to combat this easily foreseeable situation.
2. Damaging a player in any way while purple will I'm sure accrue possible corruption accrued on player death. I don't see why death is a necessity, you purple on someone you should still accrue some corruption even if he hands you your a$$. Not enough for stat altering, but still..... I'm sure this will be tuned through lots and lots of testing.
3. There is a thin line on PKing for opportunistic and straight up griefing, griefing to such an extent to become harassment is indeed that and would have GM repercussions.
There's a difference between I ganked him because he was carrying some dank mythril that I wanted, to I killed him 100 times because he won't move his freehold.
One thought I had would be for the greater your corruption the longer before you can re-spawn upon death. This I think would drive people nuts after a while without driving off players that are legitimately interact with the world.
This is the naivete I'm talking about with regards to how little effect these mechanics will have on these issues with mega guilds. They operate on a completely different level than single players or small groups of players.
here,They mention again how it affects your performance.
here they explain on the difference about losing experience vs gaining Negative Experience.
here they talk about how the corruption from PK means insane amounts of Negative experience.
Again, it is naive to think these mega guilds won't have a support system in place to very quickly rid their PK team of corruption, regardless of how that mechanic works.
And again, if the solution is "death clears corruption", it won't be good enough.
The teams "sitting out" due to high levels of corruption will be assigned other tasks they can complete until they can resume their PKing ways.
Along these lines of thought, any large guild could have a PK group along with a bounty group. By letting the PK group run rampant, the bounty group not only gets the rewards for termination (if applicable), but also resets the PK group.
But that also brings up another point. They don't necessarily have to be in the same guild either. Two guilds under the same leader or council, or even allied guilds could produce the same result.
The point I'm trying to get at here over all is that this particular mechanic can't be perfectly balanced.
-One, it will be a griefer's tool only, and a majority of the player base won't even think to engage in PK (Too strict to provide benefit).
-Two, it's mechanics and system don't punish players enough so the rewards for PKing outweigh the disadvantages negative xp brings (Not strict enough).
-Three, some guilds or players manage to find loop holes in the system to exploit regardless of the system rules in place. There isn't much you can do about this unless you bog the system down with more rules and exceptions.
Excellent point about a mega guild having a PK group and a Bounty Hunter group to offset each other AND benefit the guild as a whole.
In fact, Bounty Hunter kills will probably aid in gaining control of a Divine node, which means having more PKers in the guild to kill with Bounty Hunters will actually benefit the guild, and completely negate the intent of that mechanic.
Have you ever played a large scale persistent PvP game for any amount of time? Which games? What did you accomplish?
Or is all your "experience" limited to what you've read about AoC?
Negative experience works like a shield. You have to eat through the shield before you start chipping away at health. The same applies to exp. While you can not delevel you may lose abilities and have performance reduced until you can earn enough experience to get back up to the experience points you had.
So if it takes you 100 experience to level... You die and get negative experience. Now instead of 100 exp you need 120 (20 is negative (your skills are potentially weakened or missing) and 100 normal exp which your character is at "full strength" unless your corrupted)
This is all based off current known information and may or may not be changed. Numbers were pulled from thin air.
Personally I believe the current system is to penalizing and doesn't properly encourage people to remain a combatant. I know inevitably I will end up a red player without ganking or griefing and I'm fine with that.
I've chosen to stay fairly quiet on these topics unless incorrect information pops up and I will remain that way until it's implemented and tested.
All members will race to max level. They will be max level before almost all casual players. They won't care how much xp it takes to level. Do players de-level on death? Maybe, but it won't matter.
When the guild's PK members have too much negative xp, they will simply power level them using the most efficient mechanic possible. It doesn't matter what that mechanic is, these guilds will identify it and maximize it. Most likely these PK accounts will be power leveled while the player is AFK, so every time he logs in he is ready to go at full strength.
To clear corruption they will either suicide off cliffs, die to some mobs near their node, or have one of the guild's Bounty Hunters kill them (who then gains credit for the node).
They don't need to be in-game allies, friends or guild-mates to do this. All organization of such activities will occur outside the game. If they have to control multiple nodes to accomplish this, they will. They will be stamping out all competing nodes once their metro is established, so establishing a second node under guild control for all similar tactics will be a no-brainer.
Again, all these comments come from people with no experience in persistent PvP games. Nothing I have seen or heard from the devs is going to stop any of the things we see happen in every other such game.
What, in your opinion, would you say the solution(s) to this problem is?
1. Apply diminishing returns on the amount a single player can contribute to a node per day/week/month or whatever time frame is appropriate. This will help prevent each of the 100-200 core no-life members of these mega guilds from growing/maintaining a node at 20+ times the rate of a casual player.
2. Apply a power cap of some sort to node defenses and siege power. Only allow a metro to be defended by 5 defense towers (for example) so these guilds can't farm 500 defense towers and become invincible. Only allow a siege to contain 5 catapults so a mega guild can't farm 500 catapults and swat a competing node away like a fly on the wall.
3. Implement unstoppable acts of nature to de-level or wipe nodes. Earthquakes, eruptions, meteors, floods, plague, drought, tornadoes, etc. These random events will help to level the playing field since they can strike anywhere, no matter how much resources were used to build up a node.
There are several obvious tactics these guilds will use because they use them in every single persistent PvP game in existence. They will cement their seat of power, and then stamp out all competition. They will deny access to resources. They will implement rules enforced by squads of PKers. They will essentially run the server until they get bored. AoC will be no different, regardless of what fanbois chant over and over.
It would be a shame if boredom was the only means of balance...
I just saw the AoC lead developer struggle to jump over a pit in a dungeon. Do we really think he has the level of experience needed to design systems to thwart these professional gamers who make a living posting videos of how awesome they are?
You won't be mimicking a hardcore PvP guild with a merry band of random testers.